WESLEY 

AND   HIS   CENTURY 


London.  Smith.Eldurfc  Co  IS.Waterloo  Pla 


WESLEY 

AND   HIS   CENTURY 

A    STUDY    IN    SPIRITUAL    FORCES 


BY    THE 

REV.  W.   H.   FITCHETT,  B.A.,  LL.D. 

PRINCIPAL  OF  THE   METHODIST  LADIES'   COLLEGE,    HAWTHORN, 
MELBOURNE  ;    PRESIDENT  OF  THE   METHODIST 

CHURCH   OF   AUSTRALASIA 
AUTHOR   OF    "HOW   ENGLAND   SAVED   EUROPE,"   ETC.    ETC. 


WITH  A   PORTRAIT  AND  FACSIMILES 


SECOND  IMPRESSION 


NEW   YORK:   EATON    &   MAINS 
CINCINNATI:  JENNINGS   &   GRAHAM 

1907 


Printed  by 

BALLANTYNB,  HANSON  &>  Co. 
Edinburgh 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PROEM — WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY  i 


BOOK   I.— THE    MAKING   OF   A    MAN 

CHAP. 

I.  HOME  FORCES 13 

II.  THE  WESLEY  HOUSEHOLD 23 

III.  HOUSEHOLD  STORIES 32 

IV.  PERSONAL  EQUIPMENT 42 


BOOK    II.— THE   TRAINING   OF   A   SAINT 

I.  CHILD  PIETY 53 

II.  IN  SEARCH  OF  A  THEOLOGY 61 

III.  A  DEEPER  NOTE 70 

IV.  A  KELIGION  THAT  FAILED 81 

V.  OXFORD  LOSES  ITS  SPELL 88 

VI.  A  STRANGE  MISSIONARY 96 

VII.  BEACHING  THE  GOAL 112 

VIII.  WHAT  HAD  HAPPENED  126 


BOOK    III.— THE    QUICKENING   OF   A    NATION 

I.  ENGLAND  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY          .        .        .139 
II.  BEGINNING  THE  WORK -149 

III.  THE  FIELD- PREACHING 161 

IV.  THK  THREE  GREAT  COMRADES 169 

V.  WESLEY  AS  A  PREACHER 179 

VI.  THE  GREAT  ITINERANT 190 

VII.  A  NEW  ORDER  OF  HELPERS 204. 

VIII.  How  THE  NEW  CONVERTS  WERE  SHELTERED  .  .218 

IX.  SOLDIER-METHODISTS .225 


VI  CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

X.  How  THE  WORK  SPREAD  :  SCOTLAND       ....  240 

XI.  How  THE  WORK  SPREAD:  IRELAND         ....  248 

XII.  ACROSS  THE  ATLANTIC 260 

XIII.  THE  SECRET  OF  THK  GREAT  REVIVAL      ....  274 

XIV.  How  WESLEY  AFFECTED  ENGLAND 283 


BOOK    IV.— THE   EVOLUTION   OF    A   CHURCH 

I.  WESLEY  AS  A  CHURCH-BUILDER 299 

II.  THE  BREACH  WITH  THE  MORAVIANS        .        .        .        .310 

III.  THE  CONTROVERSY  WITH  WHITEFIELD      ....  322 

IV.  THE  ONFALL  OF  THE  BISHOPS 335 

V.  THE  CONFERENCE 347 

VI.  A  YEAR  OF  CRISIS 357 

VII.  THE  DEVELOPING  CHURCH 366 

VIII.  A  THREATENED  SCHISM 376 

IX.  THE  DEED  OF  DECLARATION 388 

X.  WESLEY'S  THEORY  OF  THE  CHURCH          ....  400 

XI.  THE  FINAL  STEPS 410 

XII.  THE  EFFECTIVE  DOCTRINES  OF  METHODISM     .        .        .  423 

XIII.  METHODISM  AS  A  POLITY 435 


BOOK    V.— PERSONAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

I.  WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY 445 

II.  WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS 456 

III.  WESLEY  IN  LITERATURE 473 

IV.  WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS 484 

V.  THE  CLOSING  DAY 497 

VI.  WESLEY'S  DEATH 5°5 

VII.  WESLEY'S  CRITICS 5*4 


EPILOGUE — THE  CONTINUITY  OF  SPIRITUAL  IMPULSE         .        .     525 
INDEX  .  531 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  WESLKY Frontispiece 

Reproduced  from  the  painting  by  GEORGE  ROMNEY,  by  the 
kind  permission  of  WALTER  R.  CASSELS,  Esq. 


FACSIMILES 

PAGE  FROM  JOHN  WESLEY'S  JOURNAL  IN  GEORGIA 

re  Miss  HOPKEY To  face  page  108 

LETTER  FROM  JOHN  WESLEY  TO  Miss  BOLTON  OF 

WITNEY,  MAY  13,  1774 „     445 

Reproduced  by  the  kind  permission  of  Miss  M.  G.  COLLINS 
of  Warwick 

PAGE  FROM  JOHN  WESLEY'S  JOURNAL  IN  GEORGIA         ,,      ,,    478 

LETTER  FROM  JOHN  WESLEY  TO  Miss  BOLTON  OF 

WITNEY,  YES.  26,  1780 .,       ,,    484 

Reproduced  by  the  kind  permission  of  Miss  M.  G.  COLLINS 
of  Warwick 


WESLEY  AND  HIS  CENTURY 

PEOEM 
WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 

IF  John  Wesley  himself,  the  little,  long-nosed,  long- 
chinned,  peremptory  man  who,  on  March  9,  1791,  was 
carried  to  his  grave  by  six  poor  men,  "leaving  behind 
him  nothing  but  a  good  library  of  books,  a  well-worn 
clergyman's  gown,  a  much-abused  reputation,  and — the 
Methodist  Church,"  could  return  to  this  world  just  now, 
when  so  much  admiring  ink  is  being  poured  upon  his 
head,  he  would  probably  be  the  most  astonished  man  on 
the  planet.  For  if  Wesley  has  achieved  fame,  he  never 
intended  it.  Seeley  says  that  England  conquered  and 
peopled  half  the  world  in  a  fit  of  absence  of  mind.  And 
if  Wesley  built  up  one  of  the  greatest  of  modern  Churches, 
and  supplied  a  new  starting-point  to  modern  religious 
history,  it  was  with  an  entire  absence  of  conscious  in- 
tention. 

For  more  than  a  generation  after  he  died  historians 
ignored  Wesley,  or  they  sniffed  at  him.  He  was  accepted 
as  a  fanatic,  visible  to  mankind  for  a  moment  on  the 
crest  of  a  wave  of  fanaticism,  and  then  to  be  swallowed 
up,  without  either  regret  or  recollection,  of  mere  night. 
Literature  refused  to  take  him  seriously.  He  was  denied 
any  claim  to  stand  amongst  the  famous  men  of  all  time. 
But  Wesley  has  at  last  come  into  the  kingdom  of  his 
fame.  The  most  splendid  compliments  paid  to  him 
to-day  come  not  from  those  inside  the  Church  he 
founded,  but  from  those  outside  it.  Leslie  Stephen 
describes  Wesley  as  the  greatest  captain  of  men  of  his 
century.  Macaulay  ridicules  those  writers  of  "  books  called 
histories  of  England"  who  failed  to  see  that  amongst 

A 


2  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

the  events  which  have  determined  that  history  is  the 
rise  of  Methodism.  Wesley,  he  says,  had  "a  genius  for 
government  not  inferior  to  that  of  Richelieu " ;  Matthew 
Arnold  gives  nobler  praise  when  he  says  he  had  "  a  genius 
for  godliness."  Soutney,  who  wrote  Wesley's  Life  without 
in  the  least  understanding  Wesley's  secret,  asserts  him  to 
be  "  the  most  influential  mind  of  the  last  century ;  the 
man  who  will  have  produced  the  greatest  effects,  centuries 
or  perhaps  millenniums  hence,  if  the  present  race  of  men 
should  continue  so  long."  Buckle  calls  him  "  the  first  of 
ecclesiastical  statesmen."  Lecky  says  that  the  humble 
meeting  in  Aldersgate  Street  where  John  Wesley  was 
converted  "  forms  an  epoch  in  English  history " ;  and  he 
adds  that  the  religious  revolution  begun  in  England  by 
the  preaching  of  the  Wesleys  is  "  of  greater  historic  im- 
portance than  all  the  splendid  victories  by  land  and  sea 
won  under  Pitt."  Wesley,  he  holds,  was  one  of  the  chief 
forces  that  saved  England  from  a  revolution  such  as 
France  knew.  "No  other  man,"  says  Augustine  Birrell, 
"  did  such  a  life's  work  for  England ;  you  cannot  cut  him 
out  of  our  national  life." 

England,  in  a  word,  is  as  truly  interested  in  Wesley  as 
in  Shakespeare.  And,  since  the  forces  which  stream  from 
religion  are  mightier  than  anything  literature  knows,  it 
is  a  reasonable  theory  that,  in  determining  the  history  of 
the  English-speaking  race,  Wesley  counts  for  more  than 
Shakespeare. 

What  was  there,  then,  in  Wesley  himself,  or  what  is 
there  in  his  work,  to  justify  compliments  so  splendid,  and 
from  authorities  so  diverse  ? 

Wesley's  least  monument,  hi  a  sense,  is  the  Church  he 
built;  and  yet  the  scale  and  stateliness  of  that  Church 
are  not  easily  realised,  nor  the  rich  energy  of  growth 
which  beats  in  its  life.  When  Wesley  died  in  1791  his 
"societies"  in  Great  Britain  numbered  76,000  members, 
with  300  preachers.  To-day,  Methodism — taking  its  four 
great  divisions  in  Great  Britain,  Canada,  the  United  States, 
and  Australasia — has  49,000  ministers  in  its  pulpits,  and 
some  30,000,000  hearers  in  its  pews.  It  has  built  88,000 
separate  churches ;  it  teaches  in  its  schools  every  Sunday 
more  than  8,000,000  children.  The  branches  of  Meth- 
odism, in  some  respects,  are  more  vigorous  than  even  the 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY  3 

parent  stock.  In  Canada,  out  of  a  population  of  less  than 
6,000,000,  nearly  1,000,000  are  Methodists.  Every  ninth 
person  in  Australasia  belongs  to  Wesley's  Church.  It  is, 
in  some  respects  at  least,  the  most  vigorous  form  of  Pro- 
testantism in  the  world.  The  Methodist  Church  of  the 
United  States  raised  ^4,000,000  as  a  centenary  effort — the 
largest  sum  raised  by  a  single  Church  in  a  single  effort  in 
Christian  history. 

Time  is  a  rough  critic ;  it  dissolves  like  some  powerful 
acid  all  shams.  But  the  Church  that  Wesley  founded 
does  more  than  barely  survive  this  test.  A  century  after 
Wesley  died,  it  is  well-nigh  a  hundred-fold  greater  than 
when  ne  left  it. 

And  yet  Wesley's  true  monument,  we  repeat,  is  not  the 
Church  that  bears  his  name.  It  is  the  England  of  the 
twentieth  century  !  Nay,  it  is  the  whole  changed  temper 
of  the  modern  world:  the  new  ideals  in  its  politics,  the 
new  spirit  in  its  religion,  the  new  standard  in  its  phil- 
anthropy. Who  wants  to  understand  Wesley's  work 
must  contrast  the  moral  temper  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury with  that  of  the  twentieth  century ;  for  one  of  the 
greatest  personal  factors  in  producing  the  wonderful 
change  discoverable  is  Wesley  himself. 

In  some  respects  the  eighteenth  century  is  the  most 
ill-used  period  in  English  history.  It  is  the  Cinderella  of 
the  centuries.  Nobody  has  a  good  word  to  say  about  it. 
Carlyle  sums  it  up  in  a  bitter  phrase :  "  Soul  extinct ; 
stomach  well  alive."  Yet  a  century  cannot  be  condensed 
into  an  epigram,  least  of  all  into  one  written  in  gall.  The 
eighteenth  century  suffers  because  we  set  it  in  a  false 
perspective.  We  compare  it  with  the  centuries  which 
come  after  it,  not  with  those  which  went  before  it.  Its 
records,  no  doubt,  look  drab-coloured  when  set  between 
the  English  revolution  of  the  seventeenth  century,  which 
destroyed  the  Stuarts,  and  the  French  revolution  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  which  cast  out  the  Bourbons.  But 
we  may  not  be  unjust,  even  to  a  century  !  The  eighteenth 
century  is,  for  England,  a  chain  of  great  names  and  of 
great  events.  It  found  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland 
separate  kingdoms ;  it  left  them  united.  If  it  took  from 
us  the  United_  States,  it  gave  us  Canada,  India,  and 
Australia. 


4  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

years  during  its  course,  William  Pitt  ruled  it  for  twenty 
years  of  splendour.  If  it  saw  a  British  Admiral  shot  on 
his  own  quarter-deck  for  cowardice,  and  a  British  fleet 
in  open  mutiny  at  the  Nore,  it  also  saw  the  great  sea 
victories  of  Rodney  at  the  Battle  of  the  Saints,  of  Lord 
Howe  on  the  first  of  June,  and  of  Nelson  at  the  Nile. 
Blenheim  was  fought  the  year  after  Wesley  was  born,  and 
the  Nile  the  year  he  died.  The  century  between  such 
events  cannot  have  been  inglorious.  It  was  certainly  a 
century  of  social  and  political  growth.  The  England  of 
George  III.  and  of  Pitt  is  a  vast  advance  on  the  England 
of  Queen  Anne  and  of  Walpole. 

The  real  scandal  of  England  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  leprosy  that  poisoned  its  blood,  the  black  spot  on  the 
shining  disc  of  its  history,  is  the  general  decay  of  religion 
which  marked  its  first  fifty  years.  At  the  point  of  its 
faith  England  was  dying.  Its  spiritual  skies  were  black 
as  with  the  gloom  of  an  Arctic  midnight,  and  chilly  as 
with  Arctic  frosts. 

Only  by  an  effort  of  the  historic  imagination  can  we 
realise  the  condition  of  England  in  1703.  When  Wesley 
was  born,  men  still  lived  who  had  seen  Judge  Jeffreys 
on  the  bench,  Titus  Gates  in  the  witness-box,  and  the 
Seven  Bishops  in  the  dock.  Jdonteso^uieu,  who  studied 
the  England  of  that  age  through  keen  Trench  eyes,  says 
bluntly  :  "There  is  no  such  thing  as  religion  in  England." 
That,  of  course,  was  not  true ;  Epworth  parsonage  itself 
disproves  it,  and  there  must  have  been  many  English 
homes  like  that  of  which  Susannah  Wesley  was  the 
mother.  But  that  saying  of  the  keen-sighted  Frenchman 
had  a  dreadful  measure  of  truth  in  it.  Christianity  under 
English  skies  was  never,  before  or  since,  so  near  the 
death  point.  Who  does  not  remember  the  sentences 
which  Bishop  Butler,  that  gloomy,  'subtle,  powerful  in- 
tellect, prefixed  to  his  "  Analogy "  ?  "  It  has  somehow 
come  to  be  taken  for  granted,"  he  wrote, "  that  Christianity 
is  not  so  much  a  subject  of  inquiry,  but  that  it  is  now  at 
length  discovered  to  be  fictitious.  .  .  .  Men  treat  it  as  if 
in  the  present  age  this  were  an  agreed  point  amongst  all 
people  of  discernment,  and  nothing  remained  but  to  set 
it  up  as  a  principal  subject  to  mirth  and  ridicule."  Be- 
twixt Montesquieu  and  Butler,  the  great  Frenchman  and 


WESLEY  S   PLACE    IN    HISTORY  5 

the  still  greater  Englishman,  what  a  procession  of  witnesses 
might  be  quoted  hi  proof  of  the  decay  of  faith  in  Great 
Britain  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century !  And 
when  faith  dies,  what  else  can  live  ? 

Who  wants  to  see  the  morality  of  that  period  will  find 
it  reflected  in  the  art  of  Hogarth,  the  politics  of  Walpole, 
the  writings  of  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  or  of  Smollett,  and  the 
pleasures  of  the  Medmenham  Club.  It  is  registered  in 
the  foulness  of  the  literature  of  the  day,  hi  the  cruelty 
of  its  laws,  in  the  despair  of  its  religion.  Christianity 
cannot  perish;  but  it  came  near  its  death- swoon  in  that 
sad  age.  "  There  was,"  says  Green,  the  historian,  "  open 
revolt  against  religion  and  against  Churches  in  both 
extremes  of  English  society.  The  poor  were  ignorant 
and  brutal  to  a  degree  impossible  now  to  realise ;  the  rich, 
to  an  almost  utter  disbelief  of  religion,  linked  a  foulness  of 
life  now  happily  almost  inconceivable." 

Then  there  came  the  Great  Revival !  The  most  wonder- 
ful movement  in  the  history  of  the  eighteenth  century ; 
its  greatest  gift  to  the  English-speaking  race,  is  nothing  in 
the  realm  of  politics,  or  of  literature,  or  of  science;  it  is 
not  the  rise  of  the  middle  classes,  which  shifted  the 
centre  of  political  power ;  or  the  great  industrial  awaken- 
ing, which  multiplied  the  wealth  of  the  nation  tenfold. 
It  is  the  re-birth  of  its  religion !  And  it  is  this  of  which 
Wesley  is  at  once  the  symbol  and  the  cause. 

That  revival  was  the  translation  into  English  life,  and 
into  happier  terms,  of  Luther's  Reformation  in  Germany. 
WycliftVs  reforms  had  no  root;  the  Reformation  in  the 
days  of  Henry  VIII.  had  almost  worse  than  no  root. 
It  was  political  and  non-moral.  The  true  awakening 
of  the  religious  life  of  the  English-speaking  race  dates 
from  Wesley.  To  say  that  he  re-shaped  the  conscience 
of  England  is  true,  but  is  only  half  the  truth.  He 
re-created  it !  It  was  dead — twice  dead ;  and  through 
his  lips  God  breathed  into  it  the  breath  of  life  again. 
The  pulse  of  John  Wesley  is  felt  to-day  in  every  form 
of  English  religion.  His  fire  burns  in  all  our  philan- 
thropy! "The  Methodists  themselves,"  to  quote  Green 
once  more,  "  were  the  least  result  of  the  Methodist  revival. 
Its  action  on  the  Church  broke  the  lethargy  of  the  clergy ; 
its  noblest  result  is  the  steady  attempt  wnich  has  never 


6  WESLEY   AND   HIS    CENTURY 

ceased  from  that  day  to  this  to  remedy  the  guilt,  the 
ignorance,  the  physical  suffering,  the  social  degradation 
of  the  profligate  and  the  poor.  .  .  .  The  great  revival 
reformed  our  prisons,  abolished  the  slave  trade,  taught 
clemency  to  our  penal  laws,  gave  the  first  impulse  to 
popular  education." 

But  what  was  Wesley's  secret  ?  By  what  strange  magic 
did  he  work  a  miracle  so  great  ?  It  is  a  great  deed  to 
create  a  new  Church,  and  perhaps  a  harder  thing  still 
to  reform  a  Church  both  old  and  dead.  How  did  Wesley 
accomplish  both  feats?  The  answer  to  this  question  is 
found  in  the  history  told  in  these  pages.  But  let  it  be 
said  at  once  that  it  is  idle  to  seek  the  reason  merely  hi 
some  endowment  of  personal  genius.  The  compliments 
paid  to  Wesley  are  often  mere  blunders.  He  was  not, 
as  Buckle  calls  him,  "  the  first  of  ecclesiastical  statesmen  " 
— a  Leo  X.  in  a  Geneva  gown.  He  did  not  possess  "  the 
strongest  mind  of  his  century,"  as  Southey  thought. 
Coleridge's  oft-urged  criticism  is  at  least  partly  true ; 
he  had  the  logical,  but  not  the  philosophical  mind.  He 
had  nothing  of  Bunyan's  dreamy  genius;  he  could  not 
compare  in  sweep  and  range  of  thought  with  the  author 
of  the  "  Analogy " ;  and,  to  come  to  later  names  and 
times,  he  had  not  Newman's  subtle  and  profound  intellect. 
The  secret  of  his  work  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  close- 
wrought  and  magnificent  ecclesiastical  machinery  with 
which  he  endowed  his  Church.  The  characteristic  in- 
stitutions of  Methodism  were  not  the  causes  of  the  great 
revival;  they  are  its  results.  And  Wesley  invented  no 
new  doctrine.  He  added  to  Christian  knowledge  no  new 
truth.  "  I  simply  teach,"  he  himself  said,  "  the  plain  old 
religion  of  the  Church  of  England "  ;  truths,  as  he  again 
put  it,  "which  were  merely  the  common,  fundamental 
teaching  of  Christianity."  And  that  is  perfectly  true. 
Wesley  did  not  re-discover  Christianity.  He  did  not 
disturb  it  with  a  new  heresy,  or  adorn  it  with  a  new 
doctrine.  He  did  not  even  set  the  old  doctrines  in  a 
new  perspective. 

The  fatal  thing  in  the  religion  of  that  age  was  that 
it  had  ceased  to  be  a  life,  or  to  touch  life.  It  was 
exhausted  of  its  dynamic  elements  —  the  vision  of  a 
Redeeming  Christ ;  the  message  of  a  present  and  personal 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY  7 

forgiveness.  It  was  frozen  into  a  theology;  it  was  spun 
out  into  ecclesiastical  forms;  it  was  crystallised  into  a 
system  of  external  ethics ;  it  had  become  a  mere  adjunct 
to  politics.  No  one  imagined  it,  or  thought  of  it,  or 
tried  to  realise  it,  as  a  spiritual  deliverance ;  a  deliverance 
at  the  very  touch  of  the  fingers;  a  deliverance  to  be 
realised  in  the  personal  consciousness.  Religion  translated 
into  terms  of  living  human  experience,  and  dwelling  as 
a  divine  energy  in  the  soul,  was  a  forgotten  thing.  An 
electric  lamp  without  the  electric  current  is  a  mere  loop 
of  calcined  fibres  black  and  dead.  And  Christianity  itself, 
in  England,  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
was  exactly  such  a  circle  of  dead  fibres.  What  Wesley 
did  was  to  pour  the  mystic  current  of  a  divine  life  through 
the  calcined  soul  ot  a  nation,  and  so  turn  blackness  into 
flame. 

Wesley's  secret,  in  brief,  does  not  lie  in  his  statesman- 
ship, in  his  genius  for  organisation,  or  in  his  intellectual 
power.  First  and  last  it  belongs  to  the  spiritual  realm. 
The  energy  that  thrilled  in  his  look,  that  breathed  from 
his  presence,  that  made  his  life  a  flame  and  his  voice  a 
spell,  stands,  in  the  last  analysis,  in  the  category  of 
spiritual  forces. 

But  all  this  only  shows  how  lofty  was  the  plane  on 
which  Wesley  worked,  and  how  great  were  the  forces 
he  represented.  George  Dawson,  in  his  "  Biographical 
Lectures,"  says:  "I  never  can  think  of  Wesley  without 
associating  him  with  the  four  glorious  Johns  of  whom 
England  ought  to  be  proud  —  Wycliffe,  the  Reformer 
before  the  Reformation  ;  Milton,  the  greatest  soul  England 
ever  knew ;  Bunyan,  the  writer  of  the  most  blessed  book 
next  to  the  Bible  that  the  world  ever  delighted  in ;  Locke, 
who  turned  a  clear  understanding,  an  admirable  educa- 
tion, and  a  pure  conscience  to  putting  that  which  was 
before  a  matter  of  feeling  on  the  grounds  of  philosophy. 
Then  comes  Wesley,  and,  I  believe,  taking  him  altogether, 
Wesley  was  worthy  to  walk  in  the  company  of  these 
four."  But  Dawson  did  not  see  that  while  Wesley  had 
not  the  genius  of  Milton,  or  the  luminous  imagination 
of  Bunyan,  or  the  analytical  intellect  of  Locke,  he  has 
yet  left  a  deeper  mark  on  English  history  than  the  other 
three  Johns  put  together ! 


8  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

There  are  men  who  live  in  history  because  they  em- 
bodied the  ruling  ideas  of  their  age  and  made  them 
victorious.  There  are  men  of  yet  loftier  force,  who  may 
be  said,  not  to  reflect,  but  to  create,  the  impulses  which 
governed  the  world  in  which  they  lived.  They  shaped 
their  epoch ;  they  were  not  shaped  by  it.  Napoleon  was 
of  the  first  type.  He  did  not  create  the  Revolution.  He 
became  its  political  heir  and  embodiment.  Cassar  was 
of  the  other  and  greater  order.  He  did  not  merely 
find  a  new  channel  for  the  currents  of  Roman  history ; 
he  changed  the  very  direction  of  their  flow.  By  force 
of  genius  he  gave  to  the  history  and  political  order  of 
Rome  a  new  physiognomy. 

Wesley,  too — if  he  is  to  be  judged  by  the  scale  and 
permanence  of  his  work — belongs  to  this  greater  type. 
He  was  not  merely  the  interpreter  of  his  age,  the  acci- 
dental figurehead  of  a  spiritual  revolution  which  was  set 
in  movement  independently  of  him,  the  human  centre 
round  which  crystallised  impulses  vaguely  stirring  in  a 
thousand  lives.  He  did  not  reflect  his  century ;  he 
wrought  it  to  a  new  pattern.  He  set  its  pulses  moving 
to  the  rhythm  of  a  new  life.  He  was,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  in  quarrel  with  the  essential  temper  of  his  age.  But 
he  bent  that  temper  to  his  own.  He  set  in  motion  forces 
which  changed  the  religious  history  of  England. 

Wesley,  to  sum  up,  was  great ;  great  in  mere  scale 
and  range  of  intellect ;  greater  than  his  generation  knew, 
or  than  even  his  own  Church  yet  realises.  No  one  can 
study  Wesley's  life  and  work  without  an  ever-deepening 
sense  of  the  scale  of  the  man,  compared  with  other 
notable  figures  in  history.  But  Wesley's  work  was  greater 
than  Wesley  himself ;  and  it  was  greater  because  its  secret 
lies  in  the  spiritual  realm. 

And  it  is  exactly  this  that  makes  his  story  an  inspira- 
tion for  all  time.  The  supreme  gifts  of  the  intellect  are 
incommunicable.  Shakespeare's  creative  genius,  Dante's 
piercing  imagination,  Darwin's  gift  for  combining  a 
thousand  apparently  unrelated  facts  into  one  triumphant 
generalisation,  Wellington's  faculty  for  guessing  "what 
there  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  hill " — all  these  came 
by  original  endowment  of  nature.  They  were  gifts,  not 
acquirements.  But  the  great  forces  and  endowments  of 


WESLEY'S  PLACE  IN  HISTORY  9 

the  spiritual  realm  do  not  depend  on  the  gifts  or  denials 
of  nature.  Their  secret  is  not  hidden  in  the  convolutions 
of  the  grey  matter  of  the  brain.  They  depend  on  spiritual 
conditions ;  so  they  lie  within  the  reach  of  common 
men. 

And  Wesley's  secret,  we  repeat,  lies  at  this  point. 
Great  as  was  his  work,  yet  the  explanation  of  it  all  is 
both  near  and  simple.  And  to  realise  this  at  the  outset 
is  the  one  condition  that  makes  the  story  of  Wesley's  life 
worth  reading  and  worth  writing. 

Yes !  across  even  what  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  the 
leanness  of  the  eighteenth  century  runs  a  golden  chain 
of  mighty  names.  Marlborough — he  won  Blenheim  the 
year  after  Wesley  was  born — stands  at  its  beginning ;  the 
man  who  behind  the  mask  of  his  serene  face  hid  the  most 
terrible  fighting  gifts  English  history,  at  least,  has  known ; 
Nelson  and  Wellington  stand  at  its  close.  Among  the 
figures  still  visible  to  history  in  the  century  are  the  two 
Pitts — haughty  father  and  still  haughtier  son ;  Wolfe 
with  his  sky-tilted  nose,  who  gave  us  America;  Clive, 
with  his  sullen  brows,  who  won  for  us  India;  and  Can- 
ning, who  called  the  new  world  into  existence  to  redress 
the  balance  of  the  old.  Its  record  in  literature  is  splendid ; 
it  ranges  from  Swift  and  Addison,  Johnson  and  Goldsmith, 
Pope  and  Gibbon,  to  Byron  and  Burns,  to  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth.  Isaac  Newton  is  its  representative  in  science ; 
Burke  and  Pitt  in  statesmanship ;  Wilberforce  in  philan- 
thropy. Yet,  in  that  crowd  of  great  faces,  the  one  which 
represents  the  force  which  has  most  profoundly  affected 
English  history  is  the  long-nosed,  clear-complexioned  face 
of  John  Wesley,  with  its  eager  eyes,  and  masterful  chin, 
and  flowing  locks. 

It  is  sometimes  claimed  that  Newman,  who  was  born 
ten  years  after  Wesley  died,  has  influenced  the  religious 
life  of  his  country  as  deeply  as  he.  A  convinced  Protes- 
tant, of  course,  must  be  forgiven  for  holding  that  Newman's 
influence,  on  the  whole,  was  evil,  and  not  good.  But, 
apart  from  this,  it  must  be  remembered  that,  of  his  ninety 
years,  Newman  threw  the  first  forty-five  into  the  scales 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  and  the  last  forty-five  into  the 
scales  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Neither  can  claim 
him  as  a  whole.  He  spent  the  first  half  of  his  life  in 


10  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

protesting  against  one  Church,  and  the  second  half  of  his 
life  in  protesting  against  the  other.  George  Washington 
is  the  only  name  in  the  record  of  the  eighteenth  century 
which  rivals  that  of  Wesley  in  its  influence  on  our  race, 
and  Wesley  represents  the  more  enduring  energy. 

All  this  may  be  claimed  for  Wesley,  not  because  he 
outshone  the  men  of  his  century  in  genius,  but  because 
he  dealt  with  loftier  forces  than  they.  Who  awakens  the 
great  energies  of  religion,  touches  the  elemental  force 
in  human  life;  a  force  deeper  than  politics,  loftier  than 
literature,  and  wider  than  science.  Wesley  worked  in  a 
realm  through  which  blew  airs  from  eternity . 


BOOK   I 

THE   MAKING   OF   A   MAN 


CHAPTER  I 

HOME    FORCES 

JOHN  WESLEY  came  of  a  notable  stock.  His  ancestors  for 
three  generations  were  gentlefolk  by  birth,  scholars  by 
training,  clergymen  by  choice,  and  martyrs,  in  a  sense, 
by  roughness  of  fortune.  They  belonged  to  a  hard 
age;  an  age  of  ejectments  and  proscriptions,  when  in- 
tolerance was  crystallised  into  Acts  of  Parliament,  and 
even  mistook  itself  for  religion.  Daniel  Defoe  sat  thrice 
in  the  public  stocks  in  the  very  year  John  Wesley  was 
born — for  no  worse  crime  than  having  written  that 
matchless  bit  of  irony,  "  A  Short  and  Easy  Way  with  the 
Dissenters  " ! 

A  very  bitter  storm  of  legalised  cruelty  beat  on  the 
Wesleys  of  that  time.  Bartholomew  Wesley,  the  great- 
grandfather of  John,  was  thrust  out  from  his  snug 
Dorsetshire  rectory,  in  advance  of  the  general  ejection 
under  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  in  1662.  His  son,  John, 
a  more  brilliant  scholar  than  even  his  father,  but  of  less 
toughness  of  fibre,  was  imprisoned  in  1661,  just  before 
his  father's  ejection,  for  not  using  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer.  He  was  turned  out  of  his  living  at  Blandford  in 
1662,  and  lived  a  harried,  distressful  life  under  the  cruel 
laws  of  the  period  afterwards.  His  natural  home  was 
Weymouth;  but  he  was  forbidden  to  settle  there.  A 
good  woman,  guilty  of  giving  him  lodgings,  was  fined 
£20  for  the  offence.  "  Often  disturbed,  several  times 
apprehended,  four  times  imprisoned,"  runs  his  patient, 
melancholy  record.  Under  the  infamous  Five  Mile  Act 
he  was  driven  from  one  place  after  another,  and  he  died, 
a  comparatively  young  man,  killed  by  the  cruel  temper 
of  his  times. 

His  son,  Samuel  Wesley,  the  father  of  John,  had  all 
the  essential  virtues  of  his  stock — their  passion  for 
scholarship,  their  courage,  their  independent  will;  but 


14  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

he  was  of  a  hardier  temper  than  his  father.  His  inde- 
pendence of  will  took  a  somewhat  surprising  develop- 
ment. This  son  and  grandson  of  ejected  ministers  decided 
that  the  Church  which  had  ejected  them  was  in  the 
right,  and  he  joined  its  ministry — thus  turning  his  back 
on  two  generations  of  ill-used  kinsfolk !  He  was,  at  the 
moment,  at  a  Dissenting  academy,  a  lad  scarcely  of  age ; 
but  the  form  of  dissent  about  him  might  well  shock  a 
youth  of  serious  and  generous  temper.  It  was  only  a 
bitter  variety  of  politics,  absolutely  exhausted  of  religious 
ideals  and  forces;  and  Samuel  Wesley  renounced  it,  trudged 
on  foot  to  Oxford,  with  exactly  forty-five  shillings  in  his 
pocket,  and  entered  himself  at  Exeter  College  as  a  "poor 
scholar." 

About  that  very  time,  in  London,  the  thirteen-year-old 
daughter  of  a  famous  Dissenting  clergyman  was  putting 
her  learned  father,  and  his  theology,  in  the  scales  of  her 
girlish  judgment,  and  solemnly  deciding  against  both  it 
and  him !  This  sturdy  youth,  trudging  in  the  winter 
weather  to  Oxford,  with  such  scanty  coins  in  his  pocket, 
but  such  high  purpose  in  his  heart,  and  this  remarkable 
theologian  in  short  dresses,  had  not  yet  met;  but  they 
were  destined  to  be  man  and  wife.  There  were,  plainly, 
some  very  notable  affinities  of  nature  betwixt  them. 
When  they  met  and  mated  their  offspring  might  well  be 
expected  to  possess  some  unusual  qualities. 

The  total  amount  of  assistance  Samuel  Wesley  received 
from  his  family  during  his  university  course  consisted  of 
five  shillings ;  but  he  emerged,  at  the  end,  with  a  degree, 
and  £10,  155.  in  cash  in  his  pocket!  On  the  whole 
no  student  perhaps  ever  gave  less  to  Oxford  or  got 
more  out  of  it  than  did  Samuel  Wesley.  In  Scottish 
universities  generations  of  hardy  students  have  culti- 
vated much  literature  on  very  little  oatmeal ;  but  all 
the  universities  north  of  the  Tweed  might  be  challenged 
to  produce  an  example  of  scholarship  nourished  on 
scantier  cash  or  a  more  Spartan  diet  than  that  of  Samuel 
Wesley. 

He  held  a  London  curacy  for  a  year,  was  chaplain  on 
board  a  king's  ship  for  another  year,  won  the  cnaplain- 
ship  of  a  regiment  by  a  poem  on  the  Battle  of  Blenheim, 
and  lost  it,  according  to  one  account,  by  publishing  an 


HOME   FORCES  15 

attack  on  Dissenters.  He  was  given  the  living  at  Epworth 
to  which  was  afterwards  added  the  neighbouring  parish 
of  Wroote. 

John  Wesley's  father,  even  at  this  distance  of  time, 
kindles  a  half  -  humorous,  half -exasperated  admiration. 
He  was  a  little,  restless-eyed,  irascible  man ;  high-minded, 
quick-brained,  of  infinite  hardihood  and  courage,  but  with 
an  impracticable,  not  to  say  irresponsible,  strain  in  his 
blood.  He  was  determined — in  spite  of  nature — to  be  a 
poet ;  and  on  his  poetry,  Pope,  though  his  friend,  finds 
time,  in  the  "Dunciad,"  to  distil  a  drop  of  gall.  His 
son  John — who  knew  bad  poetry  when  ne  saw  it — says 
of  his  father's  "  Life  of  Christ "  in  verse — filial  piety  con- 
tending in  him  with  literary  judgment — "the  cuts  are 
good ;  the  notes  pretty  good  ;  the  verses  so  -  and  -  so." 
Praise  of  more  frosty  temperature  it  is  difficult  to  imagine. 
Samuel  Wesley's  great  work  was  a  commentary  on  the 
Book  of  Job,  a  performance  which  would  have  supplied 
a  new  exercise  in  patience  to  that  much-afflicted  patri- 
arch, if  he  had  been  required  to  read  it.  "  Poor  Job ! " 
says  Bishop  Warburton;  "it  was  his  eternal  fate  to  be 
persecuted  by  his  friends." 

Wesley's  clear-eyed  wife,  who  loved  her  impracticable 
and  hot-tempered  spouse  with  an  affection  all  husbands 
may  well  envy,  yet  admits  that  amongst  his  rough 
parishioners  at  Epworth  the  talents  of  her  husband  were 
buried,  and  says,  with  wifely  gentleness,  he  was  "forced 
to  a  way  of  life  for  which  he  is  not  so  well  qualified  as  I 
could  wish."  But  this  was  only  a  wife's  soft  periphrase. 
Her  impracticable  husband  was  busy  hammering  out 
laborious  rhymes  in  his  study,  or  was  riding  off  to 
hold  debate  \vith  his  brother  clergymen  in  Convocation, 
leaving  his  clearer-brained  wife  to  manage  the  parish, 
cultivate  the  glebe,  and  govern  her  too-numerous  brood  of 
infants. 

Susannah  Wesley,  his  wife,  would  have  been  a  remark- 
able woman  in  any  age  or  country.  She  was  the  daughter 
of  Dr.  Annesley,  himself  an  ejected  divine,  and  a  man 
of  ripe  learning  and  good  family.  The  daughter  of  such 
a  father  had  a  natural  bias  for  scholarship;  she  knew 
Greek,  Lathi,  French,  while  yet  in  her  teens,  was  satu- 
rated with  theology,  reasoned  herself  into  Socinianism 


16  WESLEY   AND   HIS    CENTURY 

— and  out  of  it — and,  generally,  had  a  taste  for  abstruse 
knowledge,  which  in  these  soft-fibred  modern  days  is 
almost  unintelligible. 

She  was  reading  the  Early  Fathers  and  wrestling  with 
metaphysical  subtleties  when  a  girl  of  to-day  would  be 
playing  tennis  or  practising  sonatas.  While  yet  only 
thirteen  years  of  age,  as  we  have  seen,  she  solemnly  re- 
viewed "  the  whole  issue  in  dispute  betwixt  Dissent  and 
the  Church,"  and  gravely  decided  that  the  views  held  by 
her  father — and  such  a  father ! — were  wrong.  A  feminine 
theologian  of  such  tender  years,  who  felt  herself  capable 
of  deciding  such  an  issue,  and  who  actually  decided  it 
in  such  a  way,  and  against  such  authorities,  would  be 
regarded  in  these  days  as  a  somewhat  alarming  portent. 
None  but  a  blue-stocking,  it  might  be  confidently  assumed 
— a  dowdy  in  spectacles,  with  neglected  dress  and  non- 
existent complexion,  from  whom  suitors  fled — would  be 
capable  of  such  a  feat.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Susannah 
Annesley  was  a  beautiful,  high-spirited  girl  —  her  sister 
was  painted  by  Lely  as  one  of  the  beauties  of  his  time — 
keen-witted,  but  modest ;  with  a  genius  for  practical 
affairs.  She  was  certainly  neither  dowdy  nor  blue- 
stocking; and  was  probably  the  most  capable  woman  in 
all  England  in  her  day. 

When  only  nineteen  years  old  she  married  Samuel 
Wesley;  and  bore  him  nineteen  children  in  twenty- 
one  years.  She  was  herself  the  twenty-fifth  child  of 
her  father.  It  was  an  age  of  small  incomes  and  large 
families ! 

She  was  an  ideal  wife,  incomparably  superior  to  her 
husband  in  practical  genius,  and  yet  herself  lovingly  blind 
to  the  fact.  She  might  have  talked  philosophy  with 
Hypatia  or  discussed  Latin  and  Greek  with  Lady  Jane 
Grey ;  and  yet  with  her  impetuous,  unpractical  husband 
she  was  as  patient — if  not  quite  as  submissive — as 
Griselda.  They  were  a  strong-willed  pair,  accustomed  to 
think  for  themselves ;  and  she  wrote  to  her  son  John 
afterwards,  "It  is  a  misfortune  almost  peculiar  to  our 
family  that  your  father  and  I  seldom  think  alike."  It 
may  be  taken  for  granted,  however,  that  when  they 
differed  the  wife  was  usually  in  the  right.  Yet  she  prac- 
tised towards  her  husband  the  sweetest  wifely  obedience. 


HOME    FORCES  17 

That  pugnacious   little   divine   very   properly   expended 

j*r-ij  t  •        f~rfj 

many  of  his  leaden  stanzas  on  his  wife : — 

"  She  graced  my  humble  roof  and  blessed  my  life ; 
Blessed  me  by  a  far  greater  name  than  wife. 
Yet  still  I  bore  an  undisputed  sway  ; 
Nor  was't  her  task,  but  pleasure,  to  obey. 

Nor  did  I  for  her  care  ungrateful  prove, 

But  only  used  my  power  to  show  my  love  ; 

Whate'er  she  asked  I  gave  without  reproach  or  grudge  ; 

For  still  she  reason  asked,  and  I  was  judge. 

All  my  commands  requests  at  her  fair  hands, 

And  her  requests  to  me  were  all  commands." 

These  are  heavy-footed  rhymes ;  and  the  actual  prose 
of  married  life  usually  comes  short  of  its  poetry.  The 
rector  of  Epworth  discovered  one  fatal  day  that  his  wife, 
who  had  her  own  political  views,  did  not  join  in  the  re- 
sponse when  he  offered  prayer  for  the  king. 

"Sukie,"  he  said  majestically,  "if  we  are  to  have  two 
kings,  we  must  have  two  beds " ;  and  the  little,  absolute, 
irresponsible,  and  exasperating  man  took  horse  and  rode 
away,  leaving  his  wife  to  care  for  his  children  and  his 
parish.  According  to  Southey — though  the  tale  is  doubt- 
ful— she  did  not  hear  of  him  again  till  twelve  months 
afterwards,  when  William  III.  died,  and  the  hot-headed 
rector  of  Epworth  came  back  condescendingly  to  the 
bosom  of  his  family ! 

The  courageous  pair  began  their  wedded  life  on  a 
curacy  and  an  income  of  £30  a  year ;  and  children  came 
fast — nineteen,  as  we  have  seen,  in  twenty-one  years.  So 
poverty — always  darkened  with  the  shadow  of  debt,  and 
sometimes  trembling  on  the  edge  of  want — was  a  constant 
element  of  the  family  life.  Years  later,  in  a  letter  to  his 
bishop,  Mr.  Wesley  gives  him  the  interesting  information 
that  he  had  but  £50  a  year  for  six  or  seven  years  to- 
gether, and  "  one  child  at  least  per  annum."  The  little 
rector  of  Epworth,  indeed,  was  fond  of  doing  exercises  in 
what  may  be  called  family  arithmetic  for  the  edification 
of  his  diocesan.  In  a  letter  to  his  Archbishop,  announcing 
the  birth  of  twins,  he  says :  "  Last  night  my  wife  brought 

B 


18  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

me  a  few  children.  There  are  but  two  yet,  a  boy  and 
a  girl,  and  I  think  they  are  all  at  present.  We  have 
had  four  in  two  years  and  a  day,  three  of  which  are 
living  .  .  .  Wednesday  evening  my  wife  and  I  joined 
stocks,  which  came  to  but  six  shillings,  to  send  for 
coals." 

A  father  who,  with  only  six  shillings  in  his  pocket,  has 
to  welcome  the  arrival  of  twins  might  be  pardoned  for 
feeling  some  anxiety.  But  the  head  of  the  Wesley  house- 
hold left  that  branch  of  family  duty,  as  he  did  most 
others,  to  his  wife.  She  carried  the  burden  of  household 
care ;  her  husband  could  betake  himself  either  to  Convo- 
cation, or  to  a  debtors'  prison,  in  a  spirit  of  most  cheerful 
philosophy.  He  wrote  to  the  Archbishop  of  York,  when 
the  gates  of  Lincoln  Castle  had  just  been  shut  on  him: 
"  Now  I  am  at  rest ;  for  I  have  come  to  the  haven  where 
I  have  long  expected  to  be."  He  adds  incidentally : 
"When  I  came  here  my  stock  was  but  little  above  ten 
shillings,  and  my  wife  at  home  had  scarce  so  much."  It 
does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  this  remarkable 
husband  that  a  wife  left  with  a  brood  of  little  children, 
and  less  than  ten  shillings  in  her  possession,  had  almost 
sharper  cause  for  anxiety  than  he  had.  She  could 
hardly  sit  down  and  write  philosophically:  "Now  I  am 
at  rest."  He  adds  :  "  She  soon  sent  me  her  rings,  because 
she  had  nothing  else  to  relieve  me  with ;  but  I  returned 
them." 

Only  once  was  there  audible  in  his  brave  wife's  voice 
a  repining  note.  While  her  husband  was  still  lying  in 
prison  for  debt,  the  Archbishop  of  York  asked  her : 

"Tell  me,  Mrs.  Wesley,  whether  you  were  ever  really 
in  want  of  bread?" 

"  My  lord,"  she  answered,  "  strictly  speaking,  I  never 
did  want  bread.  But  then  I  had  so  much  care  to  get  it 
before  it  was  eaten,  and  to  pay  for  it  after,  as  has  often 
made  it  very  unpleasant  to  me;  and  I  think  to  have 
bread  under  such  terms  is  the  next  degree  of  wretched- 
ness to  having  none  at  all." 

In  later  years  Mrs.  Wesley  writes  of  the  "  inconceivable 
distress"  from  which  they  not  seldom  suffered  in  those 
sad  days;  one  of  the  daughters,  Emilia,  speaks  with 
sharper  accents  of  the  "  intolerable  want "  of  the  family, 


HOME   FORCES  19 

and  of  the  "scandalous  want  of  necessaries"  which  not 
seldom  afflicted  them. 

Samuel  Wesley  did,  no  doubt,  manage  his  financial 
affairs  very  badly.  He  understood  practically  the  whole 
sad  philosophy  of  debt.  "  I  am  always  called  on  for 
money  before  I  make  it,"  he  wrote,  "  and  must  buy  every- 
thing at  the  worst  hand."  But  he  lacked  common-sense 
in  money  matters.  His  household  was  divided  by  very 
thin  partitions,  indeed,  from  mere  want ;  and  yet  this 
surprising  husband  and  father  could  spend  no  less  than 
£150  in  thrice  attending  Convocation!  He  was  very 
sensitive,  however,  to  any  impeachment  of  his  thrift  and 
care  as  the  head  of  his  family;  and,  to  his  brother-in- 
law,  who  attacked  him  bluntly  on  the  subject,  and  quoted 
Scripture  on  the  uncomfortable  thesis  that  he  who  failed 
to  provide  for  his  own  household  was  worse  than  an 
infidel,  offered  the  following  record  of  his  business  affairs. 
The  figures  have  a  delicious  and  characteristic  confusion 
about  them,  and  might  well  be  the  despair  of  an  ac- 
countant ;  and  yet  they  show  that  if  the  little  impatient 
man  had  never  learnt  the  art  of  living  within  his  income, 
he  contrived  to  exist  on  surprisingly  small  means.  It  is 
all  written,  it  will  be  observed,  in  the  third  person  : — 

£    *.    <*• 
Imprimis,  when  he  first  walked  to  Oxford,  he  had  in 

cash         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         250 

He  lived  there  till  he  took  his  Bachelor's  degree,  with- 
out any  preferment  or  assistance,  except  one  crown  050 

By  God's  blessing  on  his  own  industry  he  brought  to 

London  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .10150 

When  he  came  to  London,  he  got  deacon's  orders  and 

a  cure,  for  which  he  had  for  one  year  .  .  28  o  o 

In  which  year,  for  his  board,  ordination,  and  habit  he 

was  indebted  ^30,  which  he  afterwards  paid  .  30  o  o 

Then  he  went  to  sea,  where  he  had,  for  one  year,  ^£70, 

not  paid  till  two  years  after  his  return  .  .  7000 

He  then  got  a  curacy  at  ^30  per  annum,  for  two 
years,  and  by  his  own  industry,  in  writing,  <fec., 
he  made  it  £60  per  annum  .  .  .  120  o  o 

Was  there  ever  a  worse  tangled  bit  of  arithmetic  !  And 
yet  behind  the  confused  figures  there  shines  a  gallant 
spirit ! 


20  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

In  a  letter  to  his  Archbishop,  Samuel  Wesley  makes 
a  frank  but  quite  unnecessary  confession  of  his  want  of 
business  knowledge :  "  I  doubt  not  but  one  reason  of  my 
being  sunk  so  far  is  my  not  understanding  worldly  affairs, 
and  my  aversion  to  law,  which  my  people  have  always 
known  but  too  well.  I  had  but  fifty  pounds  per  annum 
for  six  or  seven  years  together,  nothing  to  begin  the  world 
with,  one  child  at  least  per  annum,  and  my  wife  sick  for 
half  that  time." 

To  all  his  other  ills  must  be  added  Samuel  Wesley's 
quarrels  with  his  neighbours,  bred,  in  the  main,  of  political 
disputes,  and  amongst  that  rough  peasantry  taking  a  very 
rough  shape.  They  maimed  his  cattle,  destroyed  his  crops, 
assailed  his  character,  tried  to  set  fire  to  his  rectory.  His 
tithes  could  be  collected  only  in  patches,  and  often  by 
force.  But  the  little  plucky  man  had  at  least  the  virtue 
of  courage.  "  They  have  only  wounded  me  yet,"  he  said, 
"and,  I  believe,  can't  kill  me."  The  whole  relation  be- 
twixt priest  and  parishioners  was  of  a  very  curious  and 
troubled  sort. 

Susannah  Wesley  was  a  mother  of  a  very  notable  type, 
and  her  management  of  her  children  may  well  be  the 
despair  of  all  mothers  and  the  envy  of  all  fathers  to  the 
end  of  time.  This  brave,  wise,  high-bred  woman,  with  the 
brain  of  a  theologian  behind  her  gentle  eyes,  and  the 
tastes  of  a  scholar  in  her  blood,  had  great  ideals  for  her 
children.  They  should  be  gentlefolk,  scholars,  Christians. 
Her  motherhood  had  an  inexorable  plan  running  through 
it ;  and  never  were  the  innumerable  offices  of  a  mother 
discharged  with  such  insistent  method  and  intelligent 
purpose.  The  whole  household  life  moved  as  if  to  a 
time-table.  The  very  sleep  of  the  children  was  measured 
to  them  in  doses.  As  each  child  reached  a  certain  fixed 
date  in  its  life  it  was  required,  within  a  certain  specified 
time,  to  learn  the  alphabet.  This  wise  mother  understood 
that  the  will  lies  at  the  root  of  the  character,  and  deter- 
mines it.  The  Wesley  household  was  richly  endowed  in 
the  matter  of  will,  so  the  first  step  in  each  child's  education 
was  to  bring  that  force  under  government.  It  was  a 
standing  and  imperative  rule  that  no  child  was  to  have 
anything  it  cried  for,  and  the  moral  effect  on  the  child's 
mind  of  the  discovery  that  the  one  infallible  way  of  no 


HOME    FORCES  21 

getting  a  desirable  thing  was  to  cry  for  it  must  have 
been  surprising. 

The  children  were  taught  to  be  courteous  in  speech ;  to 
cry  softly  when  it  was  necessary  to  cry  at  all — and  some- 
tunes  this  best  of  all  mothers  supplied  her  children  with 
excellent  reasons  for  crying. 

Mrs.  Wesley  carried  her  principle  of  method  and  a  time- 
table into  the  realm  of  religion.  She  began  surprisingly 
early.  "  The  children  were  early  made  to  distinguish  the 
Sabbath  from  other  days,  and  were  soon  taught  to  be 
still  at  family  prayers,  and  to  ask  a  blessing  immediately 
afterwards,  which  they  used  to  do  by  signs,  before  they 
could  kneel  or  speak ! "  The  cells  of  each  infantile  brain 
were  diligently  stored  with  passages  of  Scripture,  hymns, 
collects,  &c.  Prayer  was  woven  into  the  fabric  of  every 
day's  life.  The  daily  lesson  of  each  child  was  set  in  a 
framework  of  hymns.  Later,  certain  fixed  hours  were 
assigned  to  each  member  of  the  household,  during  which 
the  mother  talked  with  the  particular  child  for  whom  that 
hour  was  set  aside.  It  is  probable  that  those  rigours 
of  introspection,  that  severity  of  self-analysis,  which 
formed  the  habit  of  Wesley's  life  in  after  years  had  their 
origin  in  those  Thursday  interviews  which  Mrs.  Wesley 
had  with  "  Jackie." 

Mr.  Birrell  accuses  Mrs.  Wesley  of  hardness.  She  was, 
he  says,  "  a  stern,  forbidding,  almost  an  unfeeling  parent." 
Mr.  Lecky  says  the  home  at  Epworth  parsonage  "  was  not 
a  happy  one."  But  no  criticism  could  well  be  more  un- 
just. Life  had  not  been  soft  to  Mrs.  Wesley;  the  age 
was  not  soft.  A  strain  of  the  Spartan  mother  was  in 
her  blood,  and  not  without  need.  A  very  narrow  space 
divided  that  household  of  hungry  mouths  at  Epworth 
from  real  want.  When  Susannah  Wesley  awoke  every 
morning,  her  first  preoccupation  must  have  been  how  to 
find  bread  for  her  nungry  brood.  These  were  conditions 
unfavourable  to  light-nearted  ease.  But  no  one  can 
study  the  records  of  that  home  without  seeing  that  its 
atmosphere  was  love.  Love,  it  is  true,  of  a  strenuous 
temper,  with  no  element  hi  it  of  loitering  tenderness, 
and  no  enervating  strain  of  indulgence ;  but  still  love  of 
deathless  quality.  John  Wesley  himself  was  the  least 
sentimental  of  men ;  but  his  afiection  for  his  mother  had 


22  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

something  in  it  of  a  lover's  glow  and  tenderness.  He 
writes  to  her  hoping  he  may  die  first,  and  so  not  have  the 
distress  of  outliving  her ! 

It  is  possible  to  challenge  some  of  Mrs.  Wesley's 
methods ;  and  there  is  a  tragical  side  to  the  family  history. 
Out  of  her  nineteen  children  nearly  one-half  died  in 
infancy;  and  of  her  seven  clever,  quick-witted  girls,  five 
made  very  unhappy  marriages.  But  great  risks  lie  like  a 
shadow  on  all  human  homes. 

The  only  charge  which  can  be  fairly  urged  against 
Susannah  Wesley  is  that  she  had  no  sense  of  humour. 
The  very  names  of  the  children  prove  the  complete 
absence  of  any  sense  of  the  ridiculous  in  either  the  rector 
of  Epworth  or  his  wife.  One  daughter  was  cruelly 
labelled  Mehetabel ;  a  second  Jedidah  !  Mrs.  Susannah 
Wesley's  theological  performances  while  yet  in  short 
dresses  prove  her  want  of  humour.  A  girl  of  thirteen, 
who  took  herself  solemnly  enough  to  undertake  the 
settlement  of  "the  whole  question  betwixt  Dissent  and 
the  Church "  must  have  been  of  an  unsmiling  and  owl- 
like  gravity.  Now,  humour  has  many  wholesome  offices. 
It  acts  like  a  salt  to  the  intellect,  and  keeps  it  sweet.  It 
enables  its  owner  to  see  the  relative  sizes  of  things.  It 
gives  an  exquisite  tact,  a  dainty  lightness  of  touch  to  the 
intellectual  powers.  And  Mrs.  Wesley  visibly  lacked  any 
rich  endowment  of  that  fine  grace. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    WESLEY    HOUSEHOLD 

THE  Wesley  family,  as  we  have  described  it,  was  a 
household  of  strong  natures,  strongly  ruled,  and  ruled  to 
noble  ends.  A  cluster  of  bright,  vehement,  argumentative 
boys  and  girls,  living  by  a  clean  and  high  code,  and  on  the 
plainest  fare  ;  but  drilled  to  soft  tones,  to  pretty  formal 
courtesies;  with  learning  as  an  ideal,  duty  as  an  atmos- 
phere, and  the  fear  of  God  as  a  law.  Religion  in  the 
home  was,  as  it  ought  to  be  in  every  home,  the  master- 
force  ;  a  force  that  had  the  close  and  constant  pressure  of 
an  atmosphere.  It  was  not,  it  is  true — and  as  subsequent 
pages  will  show — the  most  intelligent  form  of  religion.  It 
created  an  atmosphere  through  which  ran  no  golden  sun- 
shine, and  in  which  few  birds  sang.  Still  it  fulfilled  its 
eternal  office  of  ennobling  the  lives  it  touched. 

And  on  the  whole,  it  may  be  confidently  asserted  that 
at  that  particular  period  of  the  eighteenth  century,  more 
brains  could  be  found  beneath  the  thatch  of  Epworth 
Parsonage  than  under  any  other  roof  in  England.  The 
elder  Wesley,  indeed,  suggests — if  only  by  his  simplicity, 
his  wrong-headed  unpractically — Dr.  rrimrose  in  the 
"  Vicar  of  Wakefield " ;  and,  it  may  be  added,  he  must 
have  been  a  much  less  comfortable  man  to  live  with  than 
Goldsmith's  amiable,  if  too  simple-minded,  hero.  But  he 
had  a  clever  brain,  an  energetic  will,  and  courage  enough 
for  a  grenadier  battalion !  He  was  no  doubt  of  a  peremp- 
tory temper.  A  will,  stubborn  by  hereditary  gift,  had  been 
hardenea  by  a  perpetual  duel  with  adverse  circumstances, 
till  it  was  almost  incapable  of  yielding.  In  his  house  he 
was  a  despot,  but  this  was  only  the  fashion  of  the  times. 
Susannah  Wesley,  in  her  letters  to  her  friends,  was 
accustomed  to  describe  her  lordly  little  husband  as  "  My 
Master,"  though,  as  is  often  the  case  in  married  life,  the 
majestic  husband  had  much  less  authority  than  he  himself 

23 


24  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

imagined.  The  children,  when  they  wrote  to  their  father, 
addressed  him  as  "  Honoured  Sir." 

Mr.  Quiller-Couch,  in  his  "Hetty  Wesley,"  however, 
draws  a  portrait  of  the  father  of  the  Wesley  household 
which  is  simply  a  caricature.  Samuel  Wesley,  as  he 
pictures  him,  with  hot,  ferret  eyes,  set  close  together 
on  either  side  of  his  long,  obstinate  nose,  is  a  sort  of 
eighteenth-century  Quilp  in  a  cassock.  He  is  a  deeply 
and  justly  hated  domestic  tyrant,  the  evil  genius  of  his 
children's  lives.  Even  the  wise,  gentle-browed  Susannah 
Wesley  is  described  as  fit  to  shape  the  lives  of  her  great 
sons,  but  as  a  curiously  helpless  mother  for  her  daughters. 
In  "  Hetty  Wesley "  is  a  scene  in  which  Molly,  the  most 
timid  and  shrinking  of  the  Wesley  girls,  faces  her  terrible 
father,  and  scolds  him  through  whole  paragraphs.  "  Your 
temper,"  she  informs  her  father,  in  sentences  which  suggest 
Dr.  Johnson,  "makes  life  a  torture.  Thwarted  abroad, 
you  have  drunk  of  power  at  home  till  you  have  come 
to  persuade  yourself  that  our  souls  are  yours."  And 
she  ends  by  pointing  her  finger  at  her  father,  and  shriek- 
ing, "  Look  at  him,  a  ridiculous  little  man." 

That  scene  is  false,  both  in  fact  and  in  art.  There 
is  no  echo  of  the  household  speech  of  the  century  in 
that  passage,  still  less  of  the  accent  of  the  Epworth 
Rectory.  Samuel  Wesley  was  not  too  wise  as  a  father, 
but  few  men  ever  made  greater  sacrifices  for  their 
children,  or  were  more  completely  bound  up  in  their 
happiness.  And  what  other  wife  and  mother  of  that 
age  can  be  put  beside  Susannah  Wesley?  She  is  one 
of  the  famous  women  of  all  time.  Of  her  three  boys, 
one  was  destined  to  mould  to  a  new  type  the  religious 
life  of  the  race  to  which  he  belonged;  a  second  was  to 
be  the  greatest  hymn- writer  in  English  literature ;  while 
the  eldest  of  the  group,  Samuel,  had  a  strength  of  will 
and  vigour  of  intellect  equal  to  his  more  famous  brothers, 
and  a  wit  even  keener.  Unfortunately,  in  his  case,  no 
thaw  ever  came  to  the  benumbing  frost  of  High  Church 
theology  which  lay  upon  him. 

The  girls  of  the  rectory  had,  of  course,  a  tamer  and 
less  varied  life  than  their  brothers.  The  sons  went  early 
to  the  noise  and  stir  of  a  great  public  school,  to  the 
learned  atmosphere  of  the  University,  and,  later  still,  to 


THE    WESLEY    HOUSEHOLD  25 

the  open  stage  of  the  great  world  itself.  And,  as  was 
natural,  the  imagination  of  both  father  and  mother 
followed  the  boys  into  those  new  realms  with  keenest 
interest.  Their  figures  took  a  new  scale  in  the  domestic 
landscape.  For  the  girls  remained  nothing  but  the 
tameness  of  home-life ;  and  the  life  of  a  country  rectory, 
set,  as  Epworth  was,  in  the  desolate  fenlands,  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  must  have  been  tame. 
Nature  was  unkind  to  it.  Life  moved  slowly,  and  was 
filled  with  commonplace  tasks.  They  had  a  preoccupied 
and  impracticable  father,  an  overburdened  mother,  a 
half-furnished  house,  and  a  very  inadequate  income. 
Suitors  were  scanty;  new  dresses  were  an  idle  dream, 
hard  work  was  inevitable.  The  girls  did  not  possess — 
and  could  hardly  be  blamed  for  not  possessing — the 
wise  philosophy  of  their  mother.  Emilia,  the  oldest  of 
the  girls,  and  the  least  contented,  talks  shrewishly  and 
often  of  the  scandalous  insufficiency  of  things  upon  which 
they  had  to  live. 

The  flat,  melancholy  fenlands,  pricked  with  thin  lines 
of  pollard  willows  and  alders,  and  seamed  with  dikes 
through  which  the  sluggish  waters  crept — dikes  which 
in  whiter  became  mere  ribbons  of  ice — all  this  made 
a  desolate  landscape,  over  which,  in  winter,  the  bitter 
south-east  winds  raged.  Here  and  there  a  distant  church 
spire  showed  like  the  point  of  a  spear  against  the  sky-line ; 
a  low  cluster  of  village  roofs,  a  solitary  farmhouse,  gave 
a  sharper  accent  to  the  desolation  of  the  scene.  The 
stubborn  fen-men  did  not  take  kindly  to  those  who,  like 
the  Wesleys,  were  not  of  their  stock.  Fifty  years  earlier 
the  surly  breed  had  waged  thinly  disguised  civil  war  with 
the  Dutch  engineer,  Cornelius  Vermuyden,  whom  William 
of  Orange  brought  over  to  drain  the  ancient  fens.  They 
broke  down  his  dams,  beat  his  workmen,  burnt  his  crops ; 
and  they  had  something  of  the  same  mood  towards  the 
Wesleys.  They  stabbed  the  little  rector's  cows,  maimed 
his  sheep,  broke  the  dams  at  night  to  flood  his  little 
fields.  They  harried  him  for  his  debts,  tried,  not  un- 
successfully, to  burn  his  parsonage  over  his  head.  Then 
they  accused  him  of  having  set  fire  to  it  himself ! 

He  was  urged  by  his  mends  to  leave  Epworth,  but 
nobody  with  the  Wesley  blood  in  his  veins  was  capable 


26  WESLEY   AND    HIS   CENTURY 

of  being  driven  any  whither.  "It  is  like  a  coward," 
Samuel  Wesley  wrote  to  his  bishop,  "  to  desert  my  post 
because  the  enemy  fire  thick  upon  me."  He  was  writing 
from  prison,  into  which  he  had  been  cast  on  account  of 
his  debts.  It  may  be  frankly  admitted  that  these  were 
not  very  happy  domestic  conditions.  They  meant  many 
cares  and  a  narrow  social  horizon  for  the  Epworth 
household. 

The  family  history  of  the  Epworth  Parsonage,  it  may 
be  added,  was  blackened  by  not  a  few  tragedies,  and 
these  all  clustered  round  the  bright,  clever  girls  of  the 
household.  There  are  worse  evils  than  want,  sharper 
ills  than  poverty,  things  harder  to  bear  than  either  pain 
or  death.  Few  mothers  have  had  keener  griefs  than 
Susannah  Wesley.  The  single  cry  of  pain,  indeed,  audible 
in  all  her  correspondence  is  a  passage  in  a  letter  to  her 
brother  Annesley: — 

"  I  am  rarely  in  health ;  Mr.  Wesley  declines  apace ;  my  dear 
Emily,  who  in  my  present  exigencies  would  exceedingly  comfort  me, 
is  compelled  to  go  to  service  in  Lincoln,  where  she  is  a  teacher  in  a 
boarding-school ;  my  second  daughter,  Sukey,  a  pretty  woman,  and 
worthy  a  better  fate,  when,  by  your  last  unkind  letters,  she  per- 
ceived that  all  her  hopes  in  you  were  frustrated,  rashly  threw  her- 
self upon  a  man  (if  a  man  he  may  be  called  who  is  little  inferior  to 
the  apostate  angels  in  wickedness)  that  is  not  only  her  plague,  but 
a  constant  affliction  to  the  family.  Oh,  sir  !  Oh,  brother  !  happy, 
thrice  happy  are  you,  happy  is  my  sister,  that  buried  your  children 
in  infancy :  secure  from  temptation,  secure  from  guilt,  secure  from 
want  or  shame,  or  loss  of  friends  !  They  are  safe  beyond  the  reach 
of  pain  or  sense  of  misery  ;  being  gone  hence,  nothing  can  touch 
them  further.  Believe  me,  sir,  it  is  better  to  mourn  ten  children 
dead  than  one  living ;  and  I  have  buried  many." 

The  vague,  bitter,  nameless  reference  here  is  to  her 
daughter  Hetty,  the  keenest  spirit,  the  liveliest,  brightest, 
and  most  unhappy  of  that  cluster  of  fair  girls  under  the 
roof  of  the  Epworth  Parsonage.  Hetty  had  rare  gifts 
of  intellect,  and  it  is  recorded  of  her  that  she  could  read 
the  Greek  Testament  by  the  time  she  was  eight  years 
of  age.  A  brilliant,  fascinating  girl,  with  a  strain  of 
gay  and  half  impish  mischief  in  her,  she  was  self-willed 
and  masterful  in  spirit ;  and  yet  no  girl  under  any  English 


THE   WESLEY    HOUSEHOLD  27 

roof  at  that  moment  had  a  more  tender  spirit,  a  quicker 
intelligence,  or  perhaps  a  sadder  fate.  She  was  the  one 
daughter  who  brought  shame  upon  the  household. 

When  her  shame  was  known  her  father  broke  into 
fierce,  inexorable  anger.  For  long  he  would  not  see 
his  daughter;  but  for  the  mother's  patience,  she  might 
have  been  driven  from  the  household  roof.  Hetty  herself, 
years  afterwards,  when  her  father  was  partially  reconciled, 
wrote :  "I  would  have  given  at  least  one  of  my  eyes 
for  the  liberty  of  throwing  myself  at  your  feet  before 
I  was  married  at  all ;  yet  since  it  is  past,  and  matrimonial 
grievances  are  usually  irreparable,  I  hope  you  will  con- 
aescend  to  be  so  far  of  my  opinion  as  to  own  that,  since 
upon  some  accounts  I  am  happier  than  I  deserve,  it  is 
best  to  say  little  of  things  quite  past  remedy." 

The  only  quarrel  John  Wesley  ever  had  with  his  father 
arose  out  of  a  sermon  he  preached  on  "The  Charity 
Due  to  Wicked  Persons,"  which  his  father  held  to  have 
been  preached  on  Hetty's  behalf  and  levelled  against 
himself. 

In  a  reckless  mood — a  mood  halt  of  contrition  and 
half  of  desperation — Hetty  vowed  to  marry  any  person 
her  parents  wished,  and  that  self-imposed  penance  was 
ruthlessly  exacted.  A  journeyman  plumber  named  Wright 
offered  himself,  the  father's  wrath  was  still  flaming,  and 
the  marriage  took  place.  Never,  perhaps,  was  a  more 
unhappy  union.  Wright,  in  character,  education,  habits, 
and  temper,  was  the  exact  opposite  of  his  wife.  It  was 
the  marriage  of  a  clever,  refined,  high-spirited  girl  to  a 
drunken  and  dissolute  boor.  She  was  a  neglected  wife, 
an  exiled  daughter,  an  unhappy  mother,  for  her  children 
died  almost  at  the  moment  of  their  birth.  One  of  the 
most  beautiful  and  pathetic  poems  of  its  kind  is  a  piece 
entitled  "  A  Mother's  Address  to  Her  Dying  Infant,"  which 
Hetty  wrote  by  the  deathbed  of  her  little  infant : — 

"  Tender  softness  !  infant  mild  ! 
Perfect,  purest,  brightest  child  ! 
Transient  lustre  !     Beauteous  clay  ! 
Smiling  wonder  of  a  day  ! 
Ere  the  last  convulsive  start 
Bend  thy  unresisting  heart ; 


28  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

Ere  the  long-enduring  swoon 
Weigh  thy  precious  eyelids  down ; 
Ah,  regard  a  mother's  moan, 
Anguish  deeper  than  thy  own  ! 
Fairest  eyes  !  whose  dawning  light 
Late  with  rapture  blest  my  sight, 
Ere  your  orbs  extinguished  be, 
Bend  their  trembling  beams  on  me  ! 
Drooping  sweetness  !  verdant  flower, 
Blooming,  withering  in  an  hour  ! 
Ere  thy  gentle  breast  sustains 
Latest,  fiercest,  mortal  pains, 
Hear  a  suppliant !     Let  me  be 
Partner  in  thy  destiny." 

If  we  add  to  these  verses  the  words — spelt  as  in  the 
original — which  Hetty's  husband  wrote  to  John  Wesley 
enclosing  the  lines,  the  interval  in  mind  and  education 
betwixt  husband  and  wife  can  be  understood : — 

"  I've  sen  you  Sum  Verses  that  my  wife  maid  of  Dear  Lamb  Let 
me  hear  from  one  or  both  of  you  as  Soon  as  you  think  Conveniant." 

Her  wedded  life,  sown  thick  with  every  kind  of  grief, 
broke  the  unhappy  Hetty's  spirits,  and  she  sought,  with 
pathetic  eagerness,  for  her  angry  little  father's  forgiveness. 

"  Honoured  Sir  (she  wrote),  although  you  have  cast  me  off,  and  I 
know  that  a  determination  once  taken  by  you  is  not  easily  moved, 
I  must  tell  you  that  some  word  of  your  forgiving  is  not  only 
necessary  to  me,  but  would  make  happier  the  marriage  in  which, 
as  you  compelled  it,  you  must  still  (I  think)  feel  no  small  concern. 
My  child,  on  whose  frail  help  I  had  counted  to  make  our  life  more 
supportable  to  my  husband  and  myself,  is  dead.  Should  God  give 
and  take  away  another,  I  can  never  escape  the  thought  that  my 
father's  intercession  might  have  prevailed  against  His  wrath,  which 
I  shall  then,  alas  !  take  to  be  manifest. 

"  Forgive  me,  sir,  that  I  make  you  a  party  in  such  happiness  (or 
unhappiness)  as  the  world  generally  allows  to  be,  under  God,  a 
portion  for  two.  But  as  you  planted  my  matrimonial  bliss,  so 
you  cannot  run  away  from  my  prayer  when  I  beseech  you  to  water 
it  with  a  little  kindness.  My  brothers  will  report  to  you  what 
they  have  seen  of  my  way  of  life  and  my  daily  struggle  to  redeem 
the  past.  But  I  have  come  to  a  point  where  I  feel  your  forgiveness 
to  be  necessary  to  me.  I  beseech  you,  then,  not  to  withhold  it." 


THE    WESLEY    HOUSEHOLD  29 

Samuel  Wesley,  however,  listened  with  unconvinced 
ears.  He  found  no  true  note  of  sincerity  in  his  unhappy 
daughter's  letters.  He  advised  her,  hi  her  next  letter,  if 
she  wishes  to  convince  him,  to  "  display  less  wit  and  more 
evidence  of  self-examination."  "  What  hurt,"  he  asks, 
"has  matrimony  done  you?  I  know  only  that  it  has 
given  you  your  good  name."  A  mother,  of  course,  would 
not  have  replied  in  such  a  fashion  to  such  a  letter  as  poor 
Hetty  had  written,  but  then  Samuel  Wesley  had  some- 
thing more  than  an  average  man's  inability  to  understand 
feminine  sensibilities. 

But  sorrow,  poverty,  neglect,  and  loneliness,  if  they 
broke  the  once  gay  Hetty's  pride,  refined  her  character. 
She  wrote  to  her  brother  John  in  1743  : — 

"  Though  I  am  cut  off  from  all  human  help  or  ministry,  I  am 
not  without  assistance ;  though  I  have  no  spiritual  friend,  nor  ever 
had  one  yet,  except,  perhaps,  once  in  a  year  or  two,  when  I  have 
seen  one  of  my  brothers  or  some  other  religious  person  by  stealth, 
yet  (no  thanks  to  me)  I  am  enabled  to  seek  Him  still,  and  to  be 
satisfied  with  nothing  else  than  God,  in  whose  presence  I  affirm 
this  truth.  I  dare  not  desire  health,  only  patience,  resignation,  and 
the  spirit  of  a  healthful  mind.  I  have  been  so  long  weak  that  I 
know  not  how  long  my  trial  may  last,  but  I  have  a  firm  persuasion 
and  blessed  hope  (though  no  full  assurance)  that  in  the  country  I 
am  going  to  I  shall  not  sing  '  Hallelujah  ! '  and  '  Holy,  holy,  holy  ! ' 
without  company,  as  I  have  done  in  this." 

Wesley's  last  record  of  his  sister  is  inexpressibly,  if 
unconsciously,  touching:  "1750,  March  5.  I  prayed  by 
my  sister  Wright,  a  gracious,  tender,  trembling  soul;  a 
bruised  reed,  which  the  Lord  will  not  break.  I  had  sweet 
fellowship  with  her  in  explaining  at  the  chapel  those 
solemn  words :  '  Thy  sun  shall  no  more  go  down,  neither 
shall  thy  moon  withdraw  itself;  for  the  Lord  shall  be 
thine  everlasting  light,  and  the  days  of  thy  mourning 
shall  be  ended.' " 

Let  there  be  set  against  the  background  of  that  record 
the  picture  of  the  high-spirited,  bright-witted  girl,  the 
sunshine  and  the  pride  of  the  rectory  before  she  was 
stained  by  shame  or  broken  by  human  cruelty,  and  what 
a  pathetic  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  Wesley  family 
becomes  visible ! 


30  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

Another  daughter,  Martha,  had  a  fate  almost  as  cruel 
as  that  of  Hetty,  though,  in  her  case,  there  was  no 
personal  fault  to  add  gall  to  it.  Martha  was  married  to 
one  of  Wesley's  Oxford  comrades,  Wesley  Hall,  a  clergy- 
man, a  man  of  good  family,  but  whose  character  had  in  it 
unsuspected  depths  of  vileness.  Adam  Clarke  sums  up 
his  history :  "  He  was,"  he  says,  "  a  curate  in  the  Church 
of  England,  who  became  a  Moravian,  a  Quietist,  a  Deist  (if 
not  an  Atheist),  and  a  Polygamist,  which  last  he  defended 
in  his  teaching  and  illustrated  by  his  practice."  Hall  fell 
in  love  with  Keziah  Wesley,  and  announced  that  it  had 
been  revealed  to  him  that  he  must  marry  her.  His 
affection — and  his  revelations — however,  were  of  a  very 
transferable  quality.  He  presently  cast  his  evil  eyes  on 
Martha,  and  reported  a  further  revelation  that  he  must 
marry  her.  The  neglected  Keziah  died  broken-hearted; 
upon  Martha  fell  what  proved  to  be  the  worse  fate  of 
marrying  Hall. 

Hall  had  a  genius  for  sustained  deceit  and  for  cruelty, 
which  almost  suggests  diabolical  possession.  Patty,  as  a 
girl,  was  the  most  frolicsome  of  the  whole  Epworth  group. 
"  You  will  all  be  more  serious  some  day,"  said  the  wise 
mother,  looking  at  her  laughing  children  with  prophetic 
eyes.  "Shall  /  be  more  serious,  mum?"  asked  Patty. 
"No,"  said  the  mother  with  a  smile.  Nothing,  she 
thought,  could  cloud  the  bright  spirit  of  that  girl !  And 
yet  this  merriest  of  girls  had  to  wade  through  black  floods 
of  suffering.  She  developed  a  gentle  and  heroic  patience 
which  outshone  that  of  Tennyson's  Griselda.  She  covered 
her  vile  husband's  faults,  nursed  his  mistresses,  took  into 
pitying  arms  his  illegitimate  children,  clung  to  him  with 
heroic  fidelity.  When  her  worthless  husband,  years  after- 
wards, died,  almost  his  last  words  were,  "  I  have  injured 
an  angel,  an  angel  that  never  reproached  me." 

And  yet  his  wronged  wife's  heroic  meekness  did  not 
represent  any  want  of  either  courage  or  strength.  She 
kept  her  intellect  bright,  wore  a  serene  face  amid  all 
troubles,  and  by  the  sheer  charm  of  her  mental  qualities 
became  one  of  Dr.  Johnson's  most  intimate  and  valued 
companions.  "  Evil,"  she  once  said,  "  was  not  kept  from 
me,  but  evil  has  been  kept  from  harming  me."  If  her 
life  was  a  tragedy,  her  death  was  marked  by  a  strange 


THE    WESLEY    HOUSEHOLD  31 

peace.  Just  before  she  died,  her  niece  asked  her  if  she 
were  in  pain  ?  "  No,"  she  said,  "  but  a  new  feeling.  I 
have  the  assurance  which  I  have  long  prayed  for. 
Shout!"  she  whispered  eagerly,  and  so  she  died.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  find  in  the  records  of  womanhood 
another  example  of  a  spirit  so  sorely  tried,  yet  so  serenely 
heroic,  as  that  of  Patty  Wesley. 

Yet  another  of  the  Wesley  girls,  Susanna,  wrecked  her 
happiness  in  marriage.  She  had  the  misfortune  to  choose 
a  husband  so  atrocious  in  character  that  she  was  com- 
pelled to  leave  him.  Marriage  for  the  Wesley  household 
was  a  curiously  perilous  experiment.  All  these  tragedies, 
however,  lay  as  yet,  unguessed,  in  the  vague  and  distant 
future. 


CHAPTER  III 

HOUSEHOLD   STORIES 

SOME  of  the  incidents  of  Wesley's  childhood  must  have 
deeply  coloured  his  religion.  One  is  the  historic  fire 
which  consumed  the  rectory  in  1709,  when  Wesley  was 
not  yet  six  years  old.  The  building  was  old  and  dry, 
constructed  of  lath  and  plaster  and  ancient  timber.  On 
the  midnight  of  August  24,  1 709,  it  was  discovered  to  be 
in  flames.  The  fire  raced  along  the  woodwork  of  the 
ancient  rectory  as  though  it  had  been  so  much  tinder. 
The  rest  of  the  household  made  a  hurried  and  scorched 
escape,  but  John,  in  the  alarm  and  hurry,  was  forgotten. 

The  little  fellow  awoke  to  find  the  room  so  full  of  light 
that  he  thought  it  was  day ;  he  lifted  his  head  and  looked 
through  the  curtains.  A  red  scribble  of  fire  was  racing 
across  the  ceiling !  He  sprang  from  the  bed  and  ran  to 
the  door,  but  it  was  already  a  dreadful  tapestry  of  dancing 
flames.  He  climbed  on  a  chest  which  stood  beneath  the 
window  and  looked  out.  The  night  was  black,  but  the 
light  of  the  burning  house  fell  on  the  upturned  faces  of  a 
swaying  crowd  of  agitated  people.  The  strong  north-east 
wind,  blowing  through  the  open  door,  had  turned  the 
staircase  into  a  tunnel  of  flame ;  the  father  found  it  would 
be  death  to  climb  it.  He  fell  on  his  knees  in  the  hall, 
and  cried  aloud  to  God  for  the  child  that  seemed  shut  up 
in  a  prison  of  flame. 

Mrs.  Wesley  herself,  who  was  ill,  had — to  use  her  own 
phrase — "  waded  through  the  fire,"  and  reached  the  street, 
with  scorched  hands  and  face ;  as  she  turned  to  look  back 
at  the  house  the  face  of  her  little  son  could  be  seen  at  the 
window.  He  was  still  in  the  burning  house ! 

There  was  no  ladder;  his  escape  seemed  impossible. 
The  boy  himself  heard  behind  him  the  crackling  flames, 
and  saw  before  him  the  staring,  white-faced  crowd,  framed 
against  the  background  of  the  black  night. 


HOUSEHOLD    STORIES 

One  man,  with  more  resource  than  the  rest  of  the 
crowd,  ran  in  beneath  the  window,  and  bade  another  climb 
upon  his  shoulders.  The  boy  was  reached  and,  just  as  he 
was  drawn  through  the  window,  he  heard  the  crash  of  the 
falling  roof  behind  him.  "  Come,  neighbours,"  cried  the 
father,  when  his  child  was  brought  to  him,  "  let  us  kneel 
down !  Let  us  give  thanks  to  God !  He  has  given  me 
all  my  eight  children.  Let  the  house  go.  I  am  rich 
enough." 

No  child  of  six  could  ever  forget  an  incident  like  that. 
It  burned  itself  in  upon  the  boy's  imagination.  In  later 
years  it  became  for  him  luminous  with  new  and  strange 
meanings.  It  was  a  parable  of  his  own  spiritual  history. 
He  had  been  delivered  from  fiercer  fires  than  those  which 
consumed  Epworth  Rectory.  Was  he  not  "a  brand 
plucked  from  the  burning  " ;  and  plucked  for  some  special 
purpose  ?  Nay,  the  incident  became  a  mystic  picture  of 
the  condition  of  the  whole  world,  and  of  the  part  he  was 
to  play  in  it. 

His  theology  translated  itself  into  the  terms  of  that 
night  scene.  The  burning  house  was  the  symbol  of  a 
perishing  world.  Each  human  soul,  in  Wesley's  thought, 
was  represented  by  that  fire-girt  child,  with  the  flames  of 
sin,  and  of  that  divine  and  eternal  anger  which  unrepent- 
ing  sin  kindles,  closing  round  it.  He  who  had  been 
plucked  from  the  burning  house  at  midnight  must  pluck 
men  from  the  flames  of  a  more  dreadful  fire.  That 
remembered  peril  coloured  Wesley's  imagination  to  his 
dying  day. 

The  story  of  the  fire  is  told  by  the  rector  himself,  by 
Mrs.  Wesley,  and  by  John,  from  his  boyish  recollection. 
Of  these  three  accounts,  the  most  graphic  and  vivid  is 
that  by  Samuel  Wesley  himself,  though,  curiously  enough, 
it  is  the  account  generally  overlooked.  As  it  is  read, 
something  of  the  confusion,  the  heat,  the  terror  of  the  fire 
can  be  realised  across  nearly  two  centuries :  — 

"  A  little  after  eleven  (he  writes)  I  heard  '  Fire  ! '  cried  in  the 
street  next  to  which  I  lay.  If  I  had  been  in  my  own  chamber,  as 
usual,  we  had  all  been  lost.  I  threw  myself  out  of  bed,  got  on  my 
waistcoat  and  nightgown  and  looked  out  of  the  window ;  saw  the 
reflection  of  the  flame,  but  knew  not  where  it  was;  ran  to  my 

C 


34  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

wife's  chamber  with  one  stocking  on,  and  my  breeches  in  my  hand ; 
would  have  broken  open  the  door,  which  was  bolted  within,  but 
could  not.  My  two  eldest  children  were  with  her.  They  rose,  and 
ran  towards  the  staircase,  to  raise  the  rest  of  the  house.  Here  I 
saw  it  was  my  own  house,  all  in  a  light  blaze,  and  nothing  but 
a  door  between  the  flame  and  the  staircase. 

"  I  ran  back  to  my  wife,  who  by  this  time  had  got  out  of  bed,  and 
opened  the  door.  I  bade  her  fly  for  her  life.  We  had  a  little 
silver  and  some  gold,  about  £20.  She  would  have  stayed  for  it, 
but  I  pushed  her  out.  I  ran  upstairs  and  found  them,  came  down, 
and  opened  the  street  door.  The  thatch  was  fallen  in  all  on  fire. 
The  north-east  wind  drove  all  the  sheets  of  flame  in  my  face,  as  if 
reverberated  in  a  lamp.  I  got  twice  on  the  steps,  and  was  drove 
down  again.  I  ran  to  the  garden-door  and  opened  it.  The  fire 
was  there  more  moderate.  I  bade  them  all  follow,  but  found  only 
two  with  me,  and  the  maid  with  another  (Charles)  in  her  arms 
that  cannot  go ;  but  all  naked.  I  ran  with  him  to  my  house  of 
office  in  the  garden,  out  of  the  reach  of  the  flames ;  put  the  least 
in  the  other's  lap ;  and  not  finding  my  wife  follow  me,  ran  back 
into  the  house  to  seek  her,  but  could  not  find  her. 

"  I  ran  down,  and  went  to  my  children  in  the  garden,  to  help 
them  over  the  wall.  When  I  was  without,  I  heard  one  of  my  poor 
lambs,  left  still  above-stairs,  about  six  years  old,  cry  out,  dismally, 
'  Help  me.'  I  ran  in  again,  to  go  upstairs,  but  the  staircase  was 
now  all  afire.  I  tried  to  force  my  way  up  through  it  a  second  time, 
holding  my  breeches  over  my  head,  but  the  stream  of  fire  beat  me 
down.  I  thought  I  had  done  my  duty ;  went  out  of  the  house  to 
that  part  of  my  family  I  had  saved,  in  the  garden,  with  the  killing 
cry  of  my  child  in  my  ears.  I  made  them  all  kneel  down,  and  we 
prayed  to  God  to  receive  his  soul. 

"I  ran  about  inquiring  for  my  wife  and  other  children ;  met  the 
chief  man  and  the  chief  constable  of  the  town  going  from  my 
house,  not  towards  it,  to  help  me.  I  took  him  by  the  hand  and  said, 
'  God's  will  be  done  ! '  His  answer  was  :  '  Will  you  never  have 
done  your  tricks  1  You  fired  your  house  once  before ;  did  you  not 
get  enough  by  it  then,  that  you  have  done  it  again  1 '  This  was 
cold  comfort.  I  said,  '  God  forgive  you ! '  But  I  had  a  little 
better  soon  after,  hearing  that  my  wife  was  saved,  and  then  I  fell 
on  mother  earth  and  blessed  God. 

"I  went  to  her.  She  was  alive,  and  could  just  speak.  She 
thought  I  had  perished,  and  so  did  all  the  rest,  not  having  seen 
me  nor  any  share  of  eight  children  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour ;  and 
by  this  time  all  the  chambers  and  everything  was  consumed  to 
ashes,  for  the  fire  was  stronger  than  a  furnace,  the  violent  wind 
beating  it  down  on  the  house.  She  told  me  afterwards  how  she 


HOUSEHOLD   STORIES  35 

escaped.  When  I  first  went  to  open  the  back-door,  she  en- 
deavoured to  force  through  the  fire  at  the  fore-door,  but  was 
struck  back  twice  to  the  ground.  She  thought  to  have  died  there, 
but  prayed  to  Christ  to  help  her.  She  found  new  strength,  got  up 
alone,  and  waded  through  two  or  three  yards  of  flame,  the  fire  on 
the  ground  being  up  to  her  knees.  She  had  nothing  on  but  her 
shoes  and  a  wrapping-gown,  and  one  coat  on  her  arm.  This  she 
wrapped  about  her  breast,  and  got  safe  through  into  the  yard,  but 
no  soul  yet  to  help  her.  She  never  looked  up  or  spake  till  I 
came ;  only  when  they  brought  her  last  child  to  her,  bade  them 
lay  it  on  the  bed.  This  was  the  lad  whom  I  heard  cry  in  the 
house,  but  God  saved  him  by  almost  a  miracle.  He  only  was 
forgot  by  the  servants,  in  the  hurry.  He  ran  to  the  window 
towards  the  yard,  stood  upon  a  chair,  and  cried  for  help.  There 
were  now  a  few  people  gathered,  one  of  whom,  who  loved  me, 
helped  up  another  to  the  window.  The  child,  seeing  a  man  come 
into  the  window,  was  frightened,  and  ran  away  to  get  to  his 
mother's  chamber.  He  could  not  open  the  door,  so  ran  back  again. 
The  man  was  fallen  down  from  the  window,  and  all  the  bed  and 
hangings  in  the  room  where  he  was  were  blazing.  They  helped 
up  the  man  a  second  time,  and  poor  Jacky  leaped  into  his  arms 
and  was  saved.  I  could  not  believe  it  till  I  had  kissed  him  two  or 
three  times." 

The  next  day,  as  he  was  walking  in  the  garden,  and 
surveying  the  ruins  of  the  house,  he  picked  up  part  of 
a  leaf  of  his  Polyglot  Bible,  on  which  these  words  were 
still  legible :  "  Vade ;  vende  omnia  quce  habes ;  et  attolle 
crucem,  et  sequere  me  " — "  Go ;  sell  all  that  thou  hast ; 
and  take  up  thy  cross,  and  follow  Me." 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  such  an  experience  registered 
itself  ineffaceably  on  John  Wesley's  imagination  ?  Wesley, 
as  a  child,  must  have  watched  with  grave,  wondering 
eyes  another  incident  in  the  Epworth  household.  The 
father  was  absent  at  Convocation ;  and  Mrs.  Wesley  began 
to  hold  religious  meetings  in  the  rectory  kitchen.  She 
held  these  little  services  first  for  her  own  servants  and 
children ;  then  the  neighbours  begged  permission  to  come, 
till  thirty  or  forty  were  gathered  on  Sunday  evening. 
That  fiery  little  High  Churchman,  her  husband,  heard 
the  news.  A  "  conventicle  "  was  held  under  the  roof  of 
his  own  rectory,  with  a  woman  publicly  praying,  and 
even,  perhaps,  exhorting ;  and  that  woman  his  own  wife  ! 
Here  was  matter  to  set  the  sacerdotal  conscience  on  fire 


36  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

with  austere  anger !  Mrs.  Wesley's  letters,  in  reply  to  her 
imperious  husband,  are  models  of  sense  and  goodness,  and 
her  logic  is  quite  too  much  for  that  irascible  little  man. 

It  "looked  particular,"  her  husband  argued,  if  she  held 
a  service.  "I  grant  it  does,"  his  wife  replies,  "and  so 
does  almost  anything  that  is  serious,  or  that  may  in  any 
way  advance  the  glory  of  God  or  the  salvation  of  souls, 
if  it  be  performed  out  of  a  pulpit."  Then,  too,  her  sex 
made  it  unsuitable,  her  husband  contended,  that  she 
should  conduct  such  a  meeting.  "As  I  am  a  woman," 
Mrs.  Wesley  replies,  "so  I  am  also  mistress  of  a  large 
family ;  and  though  the  superior  charge  of  the  souls 
contained  in  it  lies  upon  you,  as  head  of  the  family,  and 
as  their  minister,  yet  in  your  absence  I  cannot  but  look 
upon  every  soul  you  leave  under  my  care  as  a  talent 
committed  to  me  under  a  trust  by  the  great  Lord  of  all 
the  families  of  heaven  and  earth.  And  if  I  am  unfaithful 
to  Him,  or  to  you,  how  shall  I  answer  when  He  shall 
command  me  to  render  an  account  of  my  stewardship  ?  " 

"  Why  did  she  not  ask  some  one  else  to  read  a  sermon  ? " 
Mr.  Wesley  demanded.  "  Alas  ! "  she  replies,  "  you  do 
not  consider  what  a  people  these  are.  I  do  not  think  one 
man  among  them  could  read  a  sermon  without  spelling 
a  good  part  of  it ;  and  how  would  that  edify  the  rest  ? " 
As  for  its  being  a  conventicle,  a  rival  of  the  church, 
"these  little  gatherings,"  Mrs.  Wesley  tells  her  husband, 
"  have  brought  more  people  to  church  than  ever  any- 
thing else  did  in  so  short  a  time.  We  used  not  to  have 
above  twenty  or  twenty-five  at  evening  service,  whereas 
now  we  have  between  200  and  300." 

Mrs.  Wesley's  modesty  is  charming.  "I  never  durst 
positively  to  presume  to  hope  that  God  would  make  use 
of  me  as  an  instrument  in  doing  good.  The  furthest  I 
ever  durst  go  was :  It  may  be !  Who  can  tell  ?  With  God 
all  things  are  possible.  I  will  resign  myself  to  Him ;  or, 
as  Herbert  better  expresses  it : — 

'  Only  since  God  doth  often  make 
Of  lowly  matter  for  high  uses  meet 

I  throw  me  at  His  feet. 
There  will  I  lie  until  my  Master  seek 
For  some  mean  stuff  whereon  to  show  His  skill ; 

Then  is  my  time.'" 


HOUSEHOLD   STORIES  37 

Mrs.  Wesley  closes  with  a  note  of  fine  dignity.  "If 
you  do,  after  all,  think  fit  to  dissolve  this  assembly,  do 
not  tell  me  that  you  desire  me  to  do  this ;  for  that  will 
not  satisfy  my  conscience.  But  send  me  your  positive 
command,  in  such  full  and  express  terms  as  may  absolve 
me  from  guilt  and  punishment  for  neglecting  this  oppor- 
tunity for  doing  good  when  you  and  I  shall  appear  before 
the  great  and  awful  tribunal  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

That  terrible  sentence  was  too  much  for  the  little 
rector,  and  the  meetings  were  continued  until  he  returned 
from  London. 

But  the  whole  incident,  it  can  well  be  imagined,  must 
have  deeply  impressed  John  Wesley,  who  then  was  only 
nine  years  old.  The  figure  of  his  mother  standing  before 
that  crowd  of  peasant  listeners,  the  grave,  sweet,  high- 
bred face,  in  such  vivid  contrast  with  every  other  face 
in  the  room ;  the  example  of  serious  but  intense  zeal ; 
the  controversy  with  the  father ;  the  questions — the  very 
questions  he  had  himself  to  settle  later,  and  on  a  larger 
field — which  was  of  greater  importance,  decorous  form  or 
spiritual  fact?  whether  it  was  wrong  to  do  good  if  the 
method  of  doing  it  was  irregular ;  did  human  souls  exist 
for  the  sake  of  ecclesiastical  forms,  or  ecclesiastical 
forms  for  the  sake  of  human  souls  ?  The  whole  inci- 
dent, we  repeat,  with  the  controversy  it  kindled,  must 
have  profoundly  impressed  Wesley.  And  his  mother's 
fine  persistency  and  courageous  zeal  must  have  helped 
to  determine  the  whole  policy  of  his  own  life  in  atter 
years. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  lively  household  at  Epworth  there 
broke  one  of  the  oddest  experiences  that  ever  visited  a 
bewildered  rector's  family  circle — the  performances  of 
that  poltergeist — noisy  ghost,  or  imp — familiarly  named 
by  the  girls  of  the  household  "Old  Jeffrey."  Who  does 
not  know  the  story  of  "Old  Jeffrey"  has  missed  one 
of  the  best  attested  and  most  curious  ghost  stories  in 
literature. 

For  nearly  six  months — from  December  1716  to  April 
1717 — the  rectory  was  made  hideously  vocal  with  mys- 
terious noises,  raps  on  doors  and  walls,  thumps  beneath 
the  floor,  the  smash  of  broken  crockery,  the  rattle  of 
iron  chains,  the  jingle  of  falling  coins,  the  tread  of 


38  WESLEY   AND   HIS    CENTURY 

mysterious  feet.  The  noises  baffled  all  more  prosaic 
explanations  and  were  at  last  assigned  by  common  con- 
sent to  some  restless  spirit;  they  became  a  sound  so 
familiar  that  they  ceased  to  be  annoying,  and  the  lively 
girls  of  the  parsonage  labelled  the  unseen,  but  too  audible, 
sprite  "  Old  Jeffrey.' 

The  story  is  told  in  letters,  in  amplest  detail,  and  by 
every  member  of  the  family  in  turn,  and  all  the  tales 
were  collected  by  John  Wesley  himself — who  was  at  the 
Charterhouse  when  "Old  Jeffrey"  was  active — and  pub- 
lished in  the  Arminian  Magazine.  There  is  an  element 
of  humour  in  the  varying  tones  in  which  the  marvellous 
tale  is  recited.  The  rector  tells  it  with  masculine  direct- 
ness, and  a  belief  in  the  ghost  which  plainly  breeds,  not 
fear,  but  only  anger,  and  a  desire  to  come  to  close  quarters 
with  it,  and  even  to  thump  it.  Mrs.  Wesley  tells  the 
story,  after  her  practical  fashion,  with  Defoe-like  sim- 
plicity; the  quick-witted  girls  tell  the  tale  with  touches 
of  girlish  imagination  and  humour ;  a  neighbouring  clergy- 
man, who  was  called  in  to  assist  in  suppressing  the  ghost, 
adds  his  heavy  voice  to  the  chorus.  The  evidence,  if  it 
were  given  in  a  court  of  law,  and  in  a  trial  for  murder, 
would  suffice  to  hang  any  man. 

Some  of  the  performances  of  the  ghost  were  of  a 
thrilling  character.  Mrs,  Wesley,  walking  hand  in  hand 
with  her  husband,  at  midnight,  downstairs  to  the  room 
whence  the  noises  came,  records  that  "  a  large  pot  of 
money  seemed  to  be  poured  out  at  my  waist,  and  to  run 
jingling  down  my  nightgown  to  my  feet."  More  than 
once  the  indignant  rector  felt  himself  actually  pushed 
by  some  invisible  force.  When  the  sounds  were  first 
heard  it  was  noticed  that  the  slumbering  children,  who 
were  unconscious  of  the  sound,  were  trembling  with 
agitation  and  terror  in  their  very  sleep ;  and  Mr.  Wesley, 
with  fatherly  indignation,  demanded  why  the  ghost  dis- 
turbed innocent  children,  and  challenged  it  to  meet  him 
in  his  study  if  it  had  anything  to  say  to  him.  He  walked 
off  majestically  to  his  study  to  meet  the  ghost,  and  found 
the  door  held  against  him. 

The  girls  discovered,  by-and-by,  that  they  could  make 
"  Old  Jeffrey  "  angry  by  making  personal  remarks  about  it, 
ascribing  its  performances  to  rats,  &c. ;  whereupon  it  would 


HOUSEHOLD   STORIES  39 

thump  the  floor  and  walls  with  huge  indignation.  "  Old 
Jeffrey  "  was  a  ghost  with  pronounced  political  views,  and 
would  kick  the  floor  or  wails  with  noisy  energy  when  Mr. 
Wesley  prayed  for  the  king.  But  the  rector's  loyal  senti- 
ments were  not  to  be  repressed  by  a  mere  Jacobite  ghost, 
and  he  would  repeat  the  prayer  for  King  George  I.  in  yet 
more  defiant  tones.  Samuel  Wesley  offered  on  this  the 
sensible  reflection,  "Were  I  the  king  myself,  I  should 
rather  Old  Nick  should  be  my  enemy  than  my  friend." 
Mr.  Wesley  pursued  the  noise  into  almost  every  room  in 
the  house,  chased  it  into  the  garden;  tried  to  open  a 
conversation  with  the  ghost,  engaged  the  services  of  a 
mastiff  to  put  it  down,  but  when  the  ghost  began  to 
discourse  the  dog  tried  ignobly  to  get  under  the  bed  in 
sheer  terror.  Once  he  made  elaborate  preparations  for 
shooting  it,  but  was  prevented  by  a  fellow  divine,  who 
was  watching  with  him,  reminding  him  that  lead  could 
not  hurt  a  spirit.  It  was  a  punctual  ghost,  and  generally 
began  its  performances  a  little  before  ten  o'clock  ;  and  the 
girls  came  at  last  to  accept  it  as  an  intimation  that  it  was 
"  time  to  go  to  sleep."  "  A  gentle  tapping  at  their  bed- 
head," John  Wesley  records,  "  usually  Began  between  nine 
and  ten  at  night :  they  then  commonly  said  to  each  other, 
'  Jeffrey  is  coming ;  it  is  time  to  go  to  sleep.' " 

"  Old  Jeffrey,"  it  may  be  added,  was  the  most  polite  and 
considerate  of  poltergeists  known  to  literature.  When  it 
was  "  on  duty,'  it  would  lift  the  latches  of  the  doors  as  the 

firls  approached  them  to  pass  through.  Mrs.  Wesley,  in 
er  literal  fashion,  appealed  to  the  invisible  imp  not  to  dis- 
turb her  from  five  to  six,  as  that  was  her  quiet  hour,  and  to 
suspend  all  noise  while  she  was  at  her  devotions ;  and  "  Old 
Jeffrey,"  the  most  gentlemanly  of  ghosts,  respected  her 
wishes,  and  suspended  his  noisy  operations  during  these 
periods. 

The  knocking  in  one  particular  chamber  was  especially 
violent  one  night;  Mr.  Wesley  went  into  the  room 
and  adjured  the  spirit  in  vain  to  speak.  He  then  said, 
"These  spirits  love  darkness.  Put  out  the  candle,  and 
perhaps  it  will  speak."  His  daughter  Nancy  did  so  and 
the  rector  repeated  his  adjuration  through  the  darkness; 
but  there  was  only  knocking  in  reply,  upon  this  he  said, 
"  Nancy,  two  Christians  are  an  overmatch  for  the  devil ; 


40  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

go  you  down  stairs.  It  may  be  when  I  am  alone  he  will 
ave  courage  to  speak."  When  the  girl  was  gone  he  said, 
"  If  thou  art  the  spirit  of  my  son  Samuel  I  pray  thee 
knock  three  knocks  and  no  more."  Immediately  all  was 
silence  and  there  was  no  more  knocking  that  night. 

The  performances  of  this  queer  poltergeist  in  Epworth 
Parsonage  have,  of  course,  their  parallel  in  many  similar 
stories ;  and  what  explanation  of  them  is  possible  ?  Mrs. 
Wesley,  after  her  direct  and  practical  fashion,  tried  "  Old 
Jeffrey  "  by  the  test  of  his  utility,  and  pronounced  against 
him.  "  If  these  apparitions,"  she  said,  "  would  instruct  us 
how  to  avoid  danger,  or  put  us  in  the  way  of  being  wiser 
and  better,  there  would  be  sense  in  it.  But  to  appear  for 
no  end  that  we  know  of,  unless  to  frighten  people  almost 
out  of  their  wits,  seems  altogether  unreasonable."  A  very 
foolish  ghost  is  "  Old  Jeffrey,"  according  to  Mrs.  Wesley ! 

Coleridge  discovers  in  the  Wesley  family  "  an  angry  and 
damnatory  predetermination"  to  believe  in  the  ghost,  a 
view  which  is  in  hopeless  quarrel  with  the  facts.  "  The 
noises,"  he  says,  "were  purely  subjective,  and  partook  of 
the  nature  of  a  contagious  nervous  disease  " — an  explana- 
tion which  respect  for  a  great  name  need  not  prevent  any 
one  from  calling  childish.  "  Old  Jeffrey,"  it  is  clear,  was 
too  much  for  the  philosophy  of  S.  T.  C.  There  are  many 
explanations  of  "  Old  Jeffrey."  Dr.  Salmon  accuses  Hetty 
Wesley  of  playing  tricks  on  her  family  and  producing  all  the 
noises ;  but  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  an  authority  on  ghosts  and 
their  performances,  writes  a  long  article  in  the  Contem- 
porary, in  defence  of  Hetty,  and  decides  that  she  "did 
not,  in  top  boots,  invade  the  room  of  her  father's  serving 
man  and  frighten  his  mastiff  into  howls."  Priestley  offers 
the  theory  of  imposture  by  servants  and  neighbours ;  Isaac 
Taylor  resolves  "  Old  Jeffrey  "  into  a  monkey-like  "  buffoon- 
ing droll "  of  a  spirit.  Mr.  Wesley  had  preached  for  several 
Sundays  against  the  "  cunning  men  "  of  the  neighbourhood, 
whom  the  ignorant  peasants  used  to  consult  as  a  kind  of 
wizards;  and  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  thinks  the  performances 
of  "  Old  Jeffrey  "  were  the  revenge  taken  by  these  "  cun- 
ning men." 

Samuel  Wesley,  the  eldest  son  of  the  household,  offers 
the  best  judgment  on  the  story,  and  he  puts  it  in  the  form 
of  an  unconscious,  but  very  respectable,  epigram.  "  Wit, 


HOUSEHOLD   STORIES  41 

I  fancy,"  he  says,  "  might  -  find  many  interpretations,  but 
wisdom  none."  The  modern  reader,  we  suspect,  will  take 
the  side  of  "  wisdom." 

"  Old  Jeffrey  "  belongs  to  the  class  of  queer  phenomena 
that  baffle  explanation,  but  the  story  undoubtedly  coloured 
John  Wesley's  imagination.  It,  to  use  Mr.  Andrew  Lang's 
phrase,  "  made  a  thoroughfare  for  the  supernatural  through 
his  brain."  It  predisposed  him  not,  it  is  true,  to  believe 
in  all  ghost  stories,  but  to  expect  them ;  to  listen  to  them 
with  alert  attention ;  to  record  them ;  to  treat  them  re- 
spectfully. He  tells  a  hundred  ghost  stories  in  his 
"Journal,"  and  always  has  towards  them  the  same 
mental  attitude  of  keenest  interest,  a  respect  for  the 
witnesses,  and  an  open  mind  as  to  any  explanation. 

According  to  one  tradition,  it  may  be  added,  "  Old 
Jeffrey"  revisited  his  familiar  haunts  nearly  a  century 
later;  and  an  incumbent  of  less  hardy  courage  than 
that  possessed  by  the  Wesley  household  was  actually 
driven  from  the  Epworth  Rectory  by  strange,  persistent, 
and  utterly  unaccountable  noises. 


CHAPTEK  IV 

PERSONAL    EQUIPMENT 

IN  the  sober  and  ordered  household  life  of  the  Epworth 
Rectory  John  Wesley  grew  up  a  grave,  silent,  patient  boy, 
with  meditative  brow  and  reflective  ways,  and  an  in- 
vincible habit  of  requiring  a  reason  for  everything  he  was 
told  to  do.  "  I  profess,  sweetheart,"  said  the  hot-tempered 
little  rector  to  his  wife,  "  I  think  our  Jack  would  not  eat 
his  dinner  unless  he  could  give  a  reason  for  it."  The  boy 
had  a  strain  of  stoical  silence  and  endurance  in  him  even 
at  that  tender  age.  In  1712  he,  with,  four  of  the  other 
children,  had  the  smallpox,  the  common  and  dreaded 
plague  of  that  time.  His  mother  writes :  "  Jack  has  borne 
his  disease  bravely  like  a  man,  indeed,  like  a  Christian ; 
though  he  seemed  angry  at  the  pustules  when  they  were 
sore,  as  we  guessed  by  his  looking  sourly  at  them,  for  he 
never  said  anything." 

The  boy's  gravity  of  temper,  and  what  may  be  called 
his  religious  docility,  were  so  marked  that  when  he  was 
not  yet  eight  years  of  age  his  father — always  disposed  to 
do  things  in  a  hurry — admitted  him  to  the  Lord's  Supper. 
His  mother,  with  the  finer  prescience  that  love  gives  to  a 
mother,  saw  in  her  second  son  the  hint  of  some  great, 
unguessed  future,  and  she  writes  in  her  diary  under  the 
head  of  "  Evening,  May  17,  1717,  Son  John"  : — 

"  What  shall  I  render  to  the  Lord  for  all  His  mercies  1  I  would 
offer  myself  and  all  that  Thou  hast  given  me ;  and  I  would  resolve 
— O  give  me  grace  to  do  it ! — that  the  residue  of  my  life  shall  be 
all  devoted  to  Thy  service.  And  I  do  intend  to  be  more  particu- 
larly careful  with  the  soul  of  this  child,  that  Thou  hast  so  merci- 
fully provided  for,  than  ever  I  have  been ;  that  I  may  instil  into 
his  mind  the  principles  of  true  religion  and  virtue.  Lord  give 
me  grace  to  do  it  sincerely  and  prudently." 


PERSONAL   EQUIPMENT  43 

In  1714  his  father  succeeded  in  procuring  for  him, 
from  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  a  nomination  to  the 
Charterhouse;  and  thus,  when  not  yet  eleven  years  old, 
from  the  shelter  of  home — and  such  a  home  ! — and  from 
an  atmosphere  charged  with  prayer  as  with  the  fragrance 
of  ever-burning  incense,  John  Wesley  stepped  into  the 
competitions  and  tumult  of  a  great  public  school.  The 
change  of  atmosphere  and  environment  was  great.  The 
Charterhouse  of  that  day  was  a  school  with  great  tradi- 
tions and  a  decent  standard  of  scholarship ;  but  it  was 
rough,  not  to  say  lawless,  to  a  degree  that  can  now  hardly 
be  realised.  The  hateful  "  fag "  system  prevailed  in  a 
very  unsoftened  form.  The  school,  indeed,  was  a  little 
patch  of  human  society,  exhausted,  in  some  respects,  of 
all  civilised  elements  and  governed  by  the  ethics  of  the 
savage.  The  stronger  and  older  boys  systematically 
robbed  the  younger  ones  of  their  meat,  and  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  six  years  Wesley  spent  in  that  school 
he  suffered  that  daily  and  ignoble  theft,  and  practically 
lived  on  bread. 

A  boy  trained  in  the  severities  of  Epworth  Parsonage, 
however,  could  easily  survive  even  the  raided  meals  of 
the  Charterhouse  School.  His  father  advised  his  son  to 
run  three  times  round  the  Charterhouse  garden  every 
morning ;  and  the  son  obeyed  that  injunction  with  the 
literal  fidelity  characteristic  of  him.  Every  morning  a 
little,  lean,  boyish  figure  might  have  been  seen  flying 
with  nimble  legs  thrice  round  the  Charterhouse  garden. 
Wesley's  hair  when  a  boy  was  of  an  auburn  tint,  though 
it  grew  darker  in  later  years ;  and  the  rich-tinted  hair 
crowning  the  thin  face,  with  its  serious  yet  keen  eyes, 
must  have  made  a  very  interesting  countenance.  Spare 
diet  and  constant  exercise  in  the  keen  morning  air  helped 
to  endow  Wesley  with  that  amazing  physical  toughness 
which  enabled  him,  when  eighty-five  years  old,  to  walk 
six  miles  to  a  preaching  appointment,  and  declare  that 
the  only  sign  of  old  age  he  felt  was  that  "  he  could  not 
walk  nor  run  quite  so  fast  as  he  once  did." 

That  he  was  an  ideal  student  —  quick,  tireless, 
methodical,  frugal  of  time  and  sober  of  spirit — goes  with- 
out saying.  The  son  of  Susannah  Wesley,  fresh  from  the 
touch  of  her  diligent  life,  and  with  the  breath  of  her 


44  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

grave  spirit  still  upon  him,  could  hardly  be  anything  else. 
And  six  years  of  strenuous,  if  somewhat  rough  and  harsh, 
life  at  the  famous  school  gave  Wesley  an  ample  founda- 
tion for  his  after  studies.  Life  at  a  great  public  school, 
however,  is  something  more  than  an  education  in  books. 
No  enervating  softness  is  in  its  atmosphere.  It  develops 
courage,  hardihood,  self-reliance.  It  hardens  all  the 
fibres  of  the  character.  It  is  one  long  and  bracing  tonic. 
Wesley  brought  from  the  Charterhouse  a  tough  body ;  but 
he  brought  from  it,  too,  a  certain  toughness  of  character, 
an  admirable  possession  for  a  youth  of  seventeen  who 
is  entering  a  great  University,  and  such  a  University 
as  Oxford  was  in  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

The  oldest  brother  Samuel  was  at  this  period  a  teacher 
in  Westminster  School,  where  the  youngest  of  the  three, 
Charles,  was  a  scholar ;  and  John  Wesley  studied  Hebrew 
under  his  elder  brother ;  for  the  Wesleys  had  in  an  ad- 
mirable degree  the  habit  of  helping  each  other.  "  Jack  is 
with  me,  writes  Samuel  to  his  father,  "  and  is  a  brave 
boy,  learning  Hebrew  as  last  as  he  can." 

At  this  stage  a  piece  of  what  seemed  surprisingly  good 
fortune  visited  the  Epworth  household.  Charles  Wesley 
was  at  Westminster,  a  lively  schoolboy,  with  more  than 
a  schoolboy's  gift  for  fighting,  when  an  Irish  gentleman, 
Garrett  Wesley,  rich  and  childless,  wrote  to  the  Epworth 
Rectory  asking  if  there  was  a  son  of  the  house  named 
Charles ;  if  so,  he  desired  to  adopt  him  as  his  heir.  There 
was  some  kinship  of  blood  betwixt  the  two  families,  but 
its  exact  degree  is  not  clear.  Garrett  Wesley  seems  to 
have  actually  contributed  to  the  cost  of  his  intended 
heir's  education  for  some  time,  and  finally  wished  to 
carry  him  off  to  Ireland  and  take  the  place  of  a  father 
to  him.  Mr.  Wesley  left  the  decision  of  the  matter  to 
the  boy  himself,  who  declined  the  proposal ;  and  Garrett 
Wesley  chose  as  his  heir  another  kinsman,  Richard 
Colley,  who  assumed  the  name  of  Wesley,  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  as  Baron  Mornington,  and  became  the  grand- 
father of  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  Up  to  1800  the  most 
famous  of  British  soldiers  appears  in  the  Army-list  as 
"  Arthur  Wesley  " ;  after  that  year  the  name  is  changed 
to  Wellesley. 


PERSONAL    EQUIPMENT  45 

This  seems  to  show  that  the  saint  and  reformer  who 
changed  the  course  of  the  religious  history  of  England  by 
spiritual  forces,  and  the  great  soldier  who  contributed 
such  splendid  victories  to  its  secular  history,  sprang  from 
the  same  family  stock.  And  betwixt  Wesley  and  Welling- 
ton are,  no  doubt,  curious  points  of  agreement.  Both 
were  little  men,  of  the  toughest  physique,  with  an  almost 
miraculous  capacity  for  hard  work,  and  with  courage 
which,  if  it  had  the  coolness  of  ice,  had  also  the  hard- 
ness of  steel.  Wellington's  "Despatches"  and  Wesley's 
"  Journal "  have  many  characteristics  in  common  —  a 
certain  stern  directness,  a  scorn  of  ornament,  a  love  for 
short  words  and  clear  thinking.  If  the  portraits  of  the 
two  men  are  studied  there  are  odd  points  of  resemblance. 
Each  has  the  long,  obstinate  nose,  the  resolute  chin,  the 
steady,  piercing  eyes  of  a  leader  of  men.  But  the  counte- 
nance ot  the  great  preacher  is  refined  and  made  gentle  by 
the  gospel  of  love  he  preached  so  long.  The  character  of 
the  famous  soldier  was  moulded  and  tempered  in  the  red 
furnace  of  Badajos  and  San  Sebastian,  of  Busaco  and  of 
Waterloo.  And  the  scars  of  the  flames  are  on  his  face 
even  in  old  age ! 

In  1720  John  Wesley  began  his  life  at  Oxford,  entering 
Christ  Church  as  a  commoner  on  a  Charterhouse  scholar- 
ship of  £40  a  year.  The  Oxford  of  1 720  might  have  been 
pronounced,  in  advance,  to  be  a  singularly  ungenial  field 
lor  a  clever  lad  of  seventeen  who  took  life  very  seriously, 
and  who — though  he  was  quite  unconscious  of  it — was  to 
be  the  agent  under  God  of  the  greatest  movement  in  the 
religious  history  of  England.  The  Oxford  of  that  day 
was  sufficiently  remote  from  the  Oxford  Matthew  Arnold 
has  painted  in  memorable  words :  "  steeped  in  sentiment, 
spreading  her  gardens  to  the  moonlight,"  and  "  whispering 
from  her  towers  the  last  enchantments  of  the  Middle 
Ages."  There  was  no  romance  about  the  Oxford  on  which 
John  Wesley  looked  with  perplexed  youthful  eyes,  and  no 
atmosphere  of  "sentiment."  In  an  age  which  counted 
"enthusiasm"  the  most  deadly  of  sins  the  Universities 
were  certain  to  suffer  most:  just  as  in  a  body  in  which 
the  circulation  of  the  blood  is  defective  the  extremities 
are  the  parts  most  affected.  And  Oxford  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eighteenth  century  was  perhaps  the  most 


46  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

prosaic  patch  in  the  whole  drab-coloured  English  land- 
scape. 

It  had  no  "  enthusiasms,"  not  even  for  athletics  !  It 
was  the  home  of  insincerity  and  idleness  and  of  the 
vices  bred  of  such  qualities.  Its  insincerity,  too,  was  of 
a  specially  evil  type.  It  was  organised,  endowed,  made 
venerable,  clothed  with  authority,  and  even  mistook  itself 
for  virtue !  All  the  formulae  of  a  great  Christian  seat  of 
Christian  learning  existed ;  but  the  facts  were  in  quarrel 
wi'th  the  formulae.  Gibbon  has  cruelly  embalmed,  like 
a  dead  fly  in  the  imperishable  amber  of  his  rhetoric, 
his  own  tutor  who  "remembered  that  he  had  a  salary 
to  receive  and  forgot  that  he  had  a  duty  to  perform " ; 
but  this  man  was  a  type  of  the  University  itself.  The 
professors  drew  salaries  for  lectures  they  never  gave ;  the 
students  bought  dispensations  for  absence  from  lectures 
which  were  never  delivered,  and  took  oaths  to  obey  laws 
which  they  never  so  much  as  read.  Oxford,  when  Wesley 
trod  its  streets,  was,  for  the  average  student,  an  education 
in  the  bad  art  of  subscribing  to  articles  he  ridiculed, 
swearing  to  keep  laws  he  ignored,  and  pretending  to 
attend  lectures  which  had  no  existence.  Whoever 
wants  to  understand  to  what  a  depth  it  had  sunk  must 
read  that  terrible  sermon  which  Wesley  himself  de- 
livered in  St.  Mary's  pulpit  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day 
of  1744.  That  discourse  is,  in  fact,  a  flaming  indict- 
ment of  the  University,  preached  with  infinite  courage 
in  the  University  pulpit  itself,  and  to  an  audience  of 
professors,  fellows,  heads  of  colleges,  and  students.  It 
can  hardly  be  wondered  at  that  this  sermon  was  the  last 
Wesley  was  allowed  to  deliver  in  the  historic  pulpit  of 
St.  Mary's ! 

A  whole  University  is  not,  of  course,  to  be  packed 
into  a  single  generalisation.  There  was  some  good  scholar- 
ship and  a  surviving  element  of  [wholesome  life  in  even 
the  Oxford  of  1720-44;  but  no  one  can  understand  the 
evolution  of  Methodism  in  its  primitive  form  at  Oxford 
who  does  not  realise  the  moral  and  intellectual  atmosphere 
of  the  great  University. 

Wesley  had  a  studious  and  successful,  if  not  brilliant, 
career  at  Oxford.  The  atmosphere  of  the  University  did 
not  enervate  him ;  perhaps  by  some  subtle  law  of  reaction 


PERSONAL    EQUIPMENT  47 

it  even  made  his  industry  more  intense.  He  took  his 
Bachelor's  Degree  in  1724  and  was  elected  Fellow  of 
Lincoln  in  1725.  A  year  later  he  was  appointed  lecturer 
in  Greek  and  Moderator  of  the  Classes.  He  took  his 
Master's  Degree  in  1727. 

Thus  at  twenty- two  Wesley  was  a  Fellow  of  the  most 
scholarly,  if  almost  the  smallest,  college  in  Oxford.  His 
brother  Samuel  had  a  good  position  in  Westminster 
School  and  was  making  powerful  friends.  Charles,  his 
younger  brother,  only  seventeen  years  old,  had  a  scholar- 
ship at  Christ  Church.  The  sons  of  the  Epworth  Par- 
sonage plainly  promised  to  do  better  in  the  world  than 
their  hot-tempered,  impracticable  father. 

And  Oxford  put  upon  John  Wesley  its  ineffaceable 
mark.  He  was  a  University  man,  with  the  merits  and 
the  faults  of  the  type,  to  the  day  of  his  death.  He  had 
mental  faculties  that  worked  with  the  exactitude  of  a 
machine.  He  excelled  in  logic,  and  was  apt  to  resolve 
everything — even  his  own  religious  experience — into  the 
terms  of  logic.  He  had  a  certain  confident  primness  of 
manner,  shone  in  argument  and  found  delight  in  it.  His 
literary  style  showed  already  the  characteristics  which 
brought  him  fame  in  later  years.  It  was  clear,  terse, 
direct,  and  marked  by  a  stern  scorn  of  ornament  and 
of  mere  verbal  pyrotechnics.  Wesley  delighted  in  short 
words  set  in  short  sentences.  His  very  brevity,  indeed — 
his  habit  of  taking  the  most  direct  road  to  his  meaning, 
and  of  clothing  his  thoughts  in  the  fewest  possible 
syllables — had  many  of  the  effects  of  wit.  He  talked 
in  epigrams  without  intending  it,  or  even  being  conscious 
of  it. 

The  youthful  Fellow  of  Lincoln  planned  great  things 
for  his  own  future.  That  somewhat  pompous  announce- 
ment, "  Leisure  and  I  have  taken  leave  of  each  other," 
belongs  to  this  period  of  his  life.  It  was  translated  into 
sober  and  humble  fact  later;  but  even  at  this  stage  he 
treated  his  degree  not  as  the  end,  but  as  the  starting- 
point  of  his  life  as  a  student.  He  distributed  his  hours 
on  plan  with  characteristic  thoroughness,  so  many  being 
given  to  classics,  so  many  to  logic  and  ethics,  so  many 
to  Hebrew  and  Arabic.  Saturday  was  devoted  to  oratory 
and  poetry,  for  already  Wesley  was  making  more  or  less 


48  WESLEY   AND   HIS    CENTURY 

successful  excursions  into  the  fairyland  of  verse.  "  Make 
poetry  your  diversion,"  wrote  his  serious-minded  mother, 
"  but  not  your  business." 

A  letter  from  a  University  chum,  Robert  Kirkham, 
gives  a  sort  of  keyhole  glimpse  of  the  secular  Wesley, 
the  young,  precise,  self-confident,  argumentative  Fellow 
of  Lincoln.  Kirkham  addresses  his  friend  as  "  Dear 
Jack,"  describes  with  undergraduate  gusto  a  dinner  of 
"calves'  head  and  bacon,  with  some  of  the  best  green 
cabbages  in  the  town."  The  dinner  party  "tapped  a 
barrel  of  admirable  cider " ;  and  by  way  of  relish  to  the 
calves'  head  and  bacon,  Wesley  was  informed,  they  dis- 
cussed "your  most  deserving  queer  character,  your  little 
and  handsome  person,  and  your  obliging  and  desirable 
conversation.  You  have  often,"  Kirkham  writes,  "been 
in  the  thoughts  of  M.  B.,  which  I  have  curiously  observed, 
when  with  her  alone,  by  inward  smiles  and  sighs,  and 
abrupt  expressions  concerning  you."  "M.  B."  was  Miss 
Betty  Kirkham,  the  writer's  sister,  and  the  letter  shows 
that  the  "  little  and  handsome  person  "  of  the  youthful 
Fellow  of  Lincoln  already  drew  the  regards  of  feminine 
eyes. 

Wesley  himselt  at  this  stage  took  an  affectionate 
interest  in  his  own  personal  appearance.  He  discusses 
with  his  brother  Samuel,  and  with  great  seriousness,  the 
question  of  whether  he-  should  wear  his  hair  long  or 
short.  "  As  to  my  looks,"  he  writes,  "  it  would  doubt- 
less mend  my  complexion  to  have  it  [his  hair]  off,  by 
letting  me  get  a  little  more  colour;  and  perhaps  it 
might  contribute  to  my  making  a  more  genteel  appear- 
ance." But  John  Wesley,  like  John  Gilpin's  wife,  was  of 
a  frugal  mind,  and  he  decided  that  the  improvement 
in  his  looks  did  not  supply  sufficient  grounds  for 
expending  two  or  three  pounds  a  year  in  payments  to 
a  barber. 

The  fact  is  that  debt  pursued  Wesley  up  to  the  very 
threshold  of  his  Fellowship.  His  father  writes  to  "  Dear 
Mr.  Fellow-elect  of  Lincoln,"  sending  him  £12  and  saying, 
"I  have  done  more  than  I  could  for  you.  I  have  not 
£$,"  he  says,  "  to  keep  the  family  till  after  harvest. 
What  will  be  my  own  fate,  God  only  knows."  The 
little  man  plainly  had  before  his  eyes  the  prospect  of 


PERSONAL   EQUIPMENT  49 

paying  another  visit  to  Lincoln  Castle  in  the  capacity 
of  a  prisoner  for  debt.  He  writes,  however,  "Sed  passi 
graviora."  "  Wherever  I  am,  my  Jack  is  Fellow  of 
Lincoln ! " 

But  a  wave  of  deeper  feeling  was  beginning  to  sweep 
through  the  channels  of  Wesley's  life,  and  "  M.  B."  with 
her  sighs,  and  the  hairdresser  with  his  scissors,  were  soon 
submerged  and  lost  for  ever  to  human  vision. 


BOOK   II 

THE   TRAINING   OF   A   SAINT 


CHAPTER   I 

CHILD   PIETY 

RELIGION  is,  of  course,  the  supreme  fact  in  John  Wesley's 
life,  the  one  thing  that  gives  it  historic  and  immortal 
interest.  In  the  great  realm  of  religion  he  found  the 
forces  which  enabled  him  to  write  his  signature  so  deeply 
on  human  history.  In  its  service  he  did  the  work  which 
has  made  his  name  famous  for  all  time.  Apart  from  the 
great  revival  in  which  he  was  the  chief  actor,  he  would, 
no  doubt,  have  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  world  of 
his  day.  A  brain  so  clear  and  nimble,  a  body  so  tough,  a 
figure  so  trim,  a  capacity  for  work  so  amazing,  must  nave 
won  for  him  success  in  any  realm  and  under  any  con- 
ditions. Had  he  remained  the  prim  High  Churchman 
with  a  purely  mechanical  religion,  he  might  have  worn  the 
lawn  sleeves  of  a  bishop,  and  his  name  would  probably  be 
carved  to-day  in  fading  letters  on  a  tomb  in  some  English 
cathedral.  But  in  that  case  his  sole  title  to  human  recol- 
lection would  be  a  dozen  arid  volumes  of  controversial 
divinity.  Wesley  changed  the  very  currents  of  English 
history;  he  gave  a  new  development  to  English  Protes- 
tantism, and  so  made  himself  visible  for  all  time ;  and 
he  was  able  to  do  this  because  he  mastered  the  central, 
essential  secret  of  religion  and  made  his  life  the  channel 
through  which  the  great  forces  which  belong  to  religion 
flowed  into  the  life  of  his  countrymen.  And  it  is  the 
religious  history  of  John  Wesley  which  still  supremely 
concerns  the  world. 

We  have  described  the  purely  human  and  secular 
elements  in  his  training  up  to  this  point,  that  his  spiritual 
history  may  be  told  as  a  separate  record,  and  so  may  be 
seen  in  unbroken  perspective. 

In  a  sense  John  Wesley's  spiritual  history  is  a 
curiously  modern  story,  and  Wesley  himself,  looked  at 
religiously,  is  the  most  modern  of  men.  In  his  biography 


54 

all  the  schools  of  the  religious  life  of  to-day  are  reflected 
and  reproduced.  Science  reports  that  in  the  pre-natal 
stages  of  the  human  infant  the  whole  physiological  chain 
of  existence,  link  by  link,  is,  so  to  speak,  rehearsed.  So 
the  stages  of  religious  experience  through  which  John 
Wesley  passed  cover  the  whole  range  of  the  religious 
moods  and  emotions  which  stir  men's  lives  to-day. 

We  have  what  may  be  called  the  religion  of  childhood 
— the  only  religion  some  people  ever  know — a  purely 
imitative  thing,  impressed  on  the  life  from  without  by 
force  of  discipline,  the  result  of  domestic  training,  but 
without  any  vital  and  spiritual  root.  We  have  the  religion 
of  the  High  Churchman,  resolved  into  a  machinery  of 
external  rules  and  maintained  by  external  discipline ; 
of  the  legalist,  with  all  the  saving  elements  of  religion 
frozen  into  ice,  and  only  its  ethics  left  alive ;  of  the 
ascetic,  who  tries  to  save  his  soul  by  afflicting  his  body — 
"  salvation  by  starvation,"  as  some  wit  has  called  it ;  of  the 
mystic,  who  loses  touch  of  solid  ground  and  of  homely 
duties  and  drifts  away  into  some  dim  realm  of  fog. 

All  these  types  exist  in  Wesley.  He  tried  all  readings 
of  religion  ;  tried  them  earnestly ;  tried  them  with  heroic 
thoroughness;  spent  thirteen  years  in  the  process — and 
found  himself  a  spiritual  bankrupt  at  the  end  ! 

He  learned  at  last  the  deep,  eternal  secret  of  religion ; 
religion  as  a  present  and  personal  deliverance;  a  de- 
liverance verified  in  the  consciousness  and  bringing 
the  redeemed  soul  into  terms  of  sonship  with  God; 
religion  with  its  secret  of  power  over  sin ;  its  great 
gift  of  a  morality  set  on  flame  by  love.  And  with  that 
supreme  discovery  his  life  was  transfigured.  Wesley's 
religious  experiences  are  thus  "the  history  of  a  soul"; 
but  they  are  much  more.  They  are  the  story  of  great 
schools  for  religion  reproduced  within  the  boundaries  of 
one  earnest  life.  All  the  successive  moods  of  Wesley's 
religious  experience  are  alive  to-day;  they  exist  contem- 
poraneously, as  separate  types  of  religion. 

In  Wesley's  spiritual  development,  too,  all  these  transi- 
tions of  experience  can  be  seen  with  crystalline  clearness, 
they  can  be  followed  with  unclouded  certainty.  His  was 
a  soul,  in  all  its  moods,  set  in  crystal ;  and  his  habit  of 
relentless  self-analysis,  the  unreserve  both  of  his  letters 


CHILD   PIETY  55 

and  of  his  immortal  Journal,  the  exquisite  simplicity  of 
his  style,  make  it  possible  to  follow  without  effort  all  the 
stages  of  his  religious  evolution.  He  has  throughout 
his  whole  life  the  frankness  of  Rousseau  without  his 
sly  self-consciousness;  and  he  moves,  of  course,  in  a 
realm  so  high  that  he  seems  to  belong  to  another  spiritual 
order  than  the  famous  Savoyard.  Then,  too,  we  have 
Wesley's  sell-judgments  revised  by  himself  at  wide  in- 
tervals both  of  time  and  of  spiritual  progress.  Thus  he 
sets  his  youth  in  the  high  lights,  and  tries  it  by  the 
fervours,  of  his  conversion.  Later  he  retries  both  by  the 
wise  and  sober  judgment  of  his  old  age.  So  we  have  the 
Wesley,  say,  of  1728  judged  by  the  Wesley  of  1738;  and 
both  again  re-judged  by  the  Wesley  of  1788.  If  ever  it 
could  be  said  of  a  human  soul  that  it  might  be  studied 
in  detail,  and  under  the  microscope,  this  may  be  said  of 
John  Wesley. 

Some  of  the  elements  of  what  may  be  called  child- 
religion  lie  on  the  surface,  and  are  easily  described  and 
assessed.  A  child  acquires  readily  a  crust  of  external 
habit,  impressed  by  rule ;  a  whole  system  of  simple  and 
undiscriminating  beliefs — beliefs  unequipped  with  proofs 
— unrelated,  indeed,  to  the  reason  and  accepted  on 
authority.  This  docile,  imitative  piety  is  as  external  to 
the  soul  as  the  skin  is  to  the  body ;  but  it  has  many  of 
the  useful  offices  of  a  skin. 

Now  all  these  elements  of  child-religion  Wesley  had  in 
a  very  high  degree.  His  mother's  bent  of  character,  her 
insistent  and  orderly  discipline  that  shut  round  her  chil- 
dren's lives  like  an  atmosphere,  and  with  something  of  the 
perpetual  and  resistless  pressure  of  an  atmosphere,  was 
exactly  calculated  to  produce  that  casing  of  habit  which 
makes  so  large  a  part  of  the  religion  of  a  child.  What 
theology  the  child  learned  was  naturally  of  a  High  Church 
type.  He  was  taught,  for  example,  that  his  sins  had  been 
washed  away  in  baptism,  and  in  after  years  he  records 
gravely  that  "not  till  I  was  about  ten  years  old  had  I 
sinned  away  that  washing  of  the  Holy  Ghost  which  was 
given  me  in  baptism."  He  was  further  taught  that  he 
"  could  only  be  saved  by  keeping  ail  the  commandments 
of  God  " ;  a  version  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  which  cost  him 
afterwards  years  of  suffering.  The  result  of  such  discipline 


56  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

and  teaching  on  a  nature  predisposed  to  meditative  gravity 
was  to  produce  a  childish  piety  of  an  abnormal  and  almost 
uncomfortable  seriousness.  But  it  so  completely  satisfied 
the  sacerdotal  ideals  of  his  father  that,  as  we  have  seen, 
when  the  boy  was  scarcely  eight  years  old  he  made  him 
kneel  at  the  table  of  the  Lord's  Supper. 

It  was  an  age  of  wonderful  children  !  Of  Mrs.  Wesley's 
father,  afterwards  Dr.  Annesley,  it  is  gravely  recorded 
that  "  when  about  five  or  six  years  old  he  began  a  practice, 
which  he  afterwards  continued,  of  reading  twenty  chapters 
every  day  in  the  Bible."  The  phenomenon  of  a  child  not 
six  years  old  who  solemnly  forms,  in  the  cells  of  his 
infantile  brain,  the  plan  of  reading  twenty  chapters  of  the 
Bible  every  day — and  sticks  to  it  through  a  long  life — 
would  in  these  modern  days  be  reckoned  nothing  less 
than  astonishing.  Of  Hetty  Wesley,  the  sister  of  John, 
it  is  on  record  that  at  eight  years  of  age  she  could  read 
the  Greek  Testament.  Do  any  such  wonderful  children 
exist  in  these  days  ? 

Perhaps  Wesley's  own  early  and  hot-house  piety  made 
him  in  later  years  too  credulous  of  infantile  saints ;  it 
helps,  indeed,  to  explain  his  melancholy  Kingswood  ex- 
periment, when  he  tried,  on  a  large  scale,  to  transfigure 
boys  of  seven  or  eight  and  ten  into  middle-aged  saints. 

But  some  of  the  sweeter  and  more  gracious  elements 
of  child-piety  are  conspicuously  absent  from  John  Wesley's 
childhood.  The  modern  Church  has  happily  learned  to 
find  in  a  little  child's  religion  some  beautiful  and  most 
enviable  graces ;  a  confident  trust  that  outruns  the 
metaphysics  of  great  theologians ;  an  easy,  happy  love 
of  God,  that  might  almost  seem  irreverent  but  for  its 
very  simplicity;  a  gladness  in  religion  as  spontaneous 
as  the  singing  of  the  birds,  and  as  sweet;  a  simplicity 
of  prayer  that  makes  a  listening  mother  both  weep  and 
smile.  "  Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy,"  says 
Wordsworth;  and  about  a  little  child,  breathing  the  air 
of  a  Christian  home,  does  lie  the  heaven  of  a  simple- 
hearted  love  of  God  and  of  a  trust  in  Him  on  which  no 
shadow  of  doubt  can  fall.  Christ  stands  close  to  the 
child's  heart.  Nay,  still  as  of  old  He  sets  the  little  child 
in  the  midst  of  His  Church  and  warns  us  all  that  that 
way  lies  heaven ! 


CHILD   PIETY  57 

Now  these  gracious  elements  of  child-religion,  glad, 
simple,  and  confident,  John  Wesley  did  not  possess. 
They  would  have  been  for  him  an  anachronism.  They 
did  not  belong  to  his  age,  nor  to  the  type  of  theology 
taught  under  the  roof  of  Epworth  parsonage.  They  formed 
no  element  in  the  measured,  exact  discipline — a  discipline 
that  dealt  out  hours  and  duties  as  a  chemist  counts  the 
drops  of  a  tincture — which  was  the  best  Mrs.  Wesley 
herself,  at  this  stage,  knew.  No  child  ever  outruns  the 
religion  of  its  own  mother;  and  if  it  was  in  one  sense 
the  merit,  it  was  also  the  defect,  of  Susannah  Wesley's 
piety  that  it  was  constructed  on  the  principle  of  a  railway 
time-table,  and  with  something  of  its  mechanical  effort 
This  was  the  school  in  which  she  herself  had  been  nurtured. 
Writing  in  1 709  to  her  eldest  son,  Samuel,  who  was  then 
at  Westminster,  she  says  :— 

"  I  will  tell  you  what  rule  I  used  to  observe  when  I  was  in  my 
father's  house  and  had  as  little,  if  not  less,  liberty  than  you  have 
now.  I  used  to  allow  myself  as  much  time  for  recreation  as  I 
spent  in  private  devotion.  Not  that  I  always  spent  so  much,  but 
I  gave  myself  leave  to  go  so  far  but  no  farther.  So  in  all  things 
else ;  appoint  so  much  time  for  sleep,  eating,  company,  &c." 

Now  a  girl  who  prayed  by  the  clock,  and  measured  her 
prayers,  and  then  allowed  herself  exactly  so  much  time 
for  "  recreation  "  as  she  had  spent  in  prayer  and  no  more, 
certainly  understood  the  seriousness  of  religion ;  but  what 
did  she  know  of  its  gracious  freedom  ?  And  this  was  the 
general  characteristic  of  Susannah  Wesley's  piety.  There 
was  an  heroic  fibre  in  it.  It  is  impossible  not  to  admire, 
almost  with  a  touch  jof  amazement,  the  resolute  methods 
of  her  religion;  its  seriousness,  its  diligence,  its  energy 
of  routine.  This  mother  of  nineteen  children,  for  example 
—who  had  to  be  their  teacher  and  almost  their  bread- 
winner, as  well  as  their  mother — yet  resolutely  spent 
one  hour  every  morning  and  another  every  evening  in 
prayer  and  meditation.  In  addition  she  generally  stole 
another  hour  at  noon  for  wholesome  privacy,  and  was 
in  the  habit  of  writing  down  at  such  times  her  thoughts 
on  great  subjects.  Many  of  these  are  still  preserved, 
marked  "  Morning,"  "  Noon,"  or  "  Evening " ;  and  they 
have  a  certain  loftiness  of  tone,  a  detachment  from  secular 


58  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

interests  nothing  less   than   amazing.     Airs   from  other 
worlds  seem  to  stir  in  them.     Here  is  one  example : — 

"  Evening.— If.  to  esteem  and  to  have  the  highest  reverence 
for  Thee  ;  if  constantly  and  sincerely  to  acknowledge  Thee,  the 
supreme,  the  only  desirable  good,  be  to  love  Thee,  I  do  love 
Thee.  If  comparatively  to  despise  and  undervalue  all  the  world 
contains,  which  is  esteemed  great,  or  fair,  or  good  ;  if  earnestly  and 
constantly  to  desire  Thee,  Thy  favour,  Thy  acceptance,  Thyself, 
rather  than  any  or  all  things  Thou  hast  created,  be  to  love  Thee, 
I  do  love  Thee  !  .  .  . 

"  If  to  rejoice  in  Thy  essential  majesty  and  glory ;  if  to  feel  a 
vital  joy  o'erspread  and  cheer  the  heart  at  each  perception  of  Thy 
blessedness,  at  every  thought  that  Thou  art  God ;  that  all  things 
are  in  Thy  power ;  that  there  is  none  superior  or  equal  to  Thee, 
be  to  love  Thee,  I  do  love  Thee  ! " 

That  is  a  remarkable  bit  of  religious  meditation.  It 
might  have  been  written  by  Madame  Guyon.  There  are, 
indeed,  many  points  of  resemblance  betwixt  the  mystical 
Frenchwoman  and  this  practical,  strong-souled  English- 
woman. But  if  Madame  Guyon  had  been  the  mother  of 
nineteen  children,  and  had  to  nourish  them  on  the  scanty 
income  of  the  Epworth  parsonage,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  her  "reflections"  would  have  had  the  serene 
altitude  of  the  sentences  we  have  quoted.  Charles 
Wesley,  in  1742,  wrote  his  mother's  epitaph: — 

"  True  daughter  of  affliction  she, 
Inured  to  pain  and  misery ; 
Mourned  a  long  night  of  griefs  and  fears, 
A  legal  night  of  seventy  years." 

But  that  can  hardly  be  described  as  a  "  legal  night "  in 
which  shone  such  star-like  thoughts  as  those  we  have 
quoted. 

And  yet  the  extract  we  have  given  shows  the  defects 
of  the  writer's  theology.  It  exactly  reflects  the  spiritual 
methods  of  her  son  during  the  troubled  years  before  his 
conversion.  She  has  the  essential  graces  of  Christian 
character,  but  without  any  note  of  glad  confidence  or 
any  certainty  of  acceptance  before  God.  The  methods  of 
logic  take  the  place  in  her  spiritual  life  of  the  gracious 
"  witness "  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  She  has  to  assure  both 


CHILD   PIETY  59 

God  and  herself  that  she  loves  by  the  help  of  syllo- 
gisms !  In  the  language  of  technical  theology  she  "  con- 
founded justification  with  sanctitication "  ;  and  this  was 
not  a  mere  blunder  in  metaphysics.  She  believed,  and 
she  taught  her  children  to  believe,  that  the  consciousness 
of  acceptance  with  God  came,  not  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  life,  but  at  the  end.  It  was  not  so  much  a 
motive  to  obedience  as  the  reward  of  an  obedience  which 
existed  independently  of  it. 

If  Mrs.  Wesley  had  applied  her  theology  to  the  story 
of  the  Prodigal  Son  she  must  have  entirely  rewritten 
that  pearl  of  parables.  She  must  have  described  the 
father  as  postponing  the  kiss,  the  ring,  the  best  robe — all 
the  pledges  of  restored  sonship — until  the  poor,  returning 
outcast  had  gone  into  the  kitchen  of  his  father's  house, 
done  the  work  of  a  servant,  and  bought  himself  a  decent 
suit  of  clothes  with  his  own  earnings !  She  herself  said 
late  in  life  that  she  had  always  regarded  the  conscious- 
ness of  God's  forgiving  grace  as  the  rare  experience  of 
great  saints,  and  an  experience  impossible  to  ordinary 
Christians. 

Now  what  Mrs.  Wesley  did  not  know  she  could  not 
teach,  and  this  explains  the  missing  elements  in  the 
childish  piety  of  her  great  son. 

Wesley's  youthful  religion  hardly  survived  the  rough 
shocks  of  life  at  the  Charterhouse  and  at  Oxford.  It 
passed  away  inevitably  with  the  tender  years  which  gave 
it  birth.  Wesley  himself  says,  "  Outward  restraints  being 
removed,  I  was  much  more  negligent  than  before  even 
of  outward  duties,  and  was  continually  guilty  of  outward 
sins  which  I  knew  to  be  such,  though  they  were  not 
scandalous  in  the  eye  of  the  world."  Wesley  wrote  these 
words  in  1738,  just  after  his  conversion;  and  when, 
judging  his  past  life  by  the  test  of  the  emotions  and 
new-born  ideals  of  that  great  experience,  he  naturally 
painted  it  in  dark  tints.  "  I  still  read  the  Scriptures,"  he 
says, "  and  said  my  prayers  morning  and  evening."  Then 
with  a  characteristic  touch  of  what  may  be  called  ex  post 
facto  self-analysis,  he  adds:  "What  I  then  hoped  to  be 
saved  by  was  (i)  not  being  so  bad  as  other  people, 
(2)  having  still  a  kindness  for  religion,  (3)  reading  the 
Bible,  going  to  church  and  saying  my  prayers."  That 


60  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

was,  of  course,  a  singularly  inadequate  scheme  of  re- 
ligion. And  though  it  cannot  be  said  that  Wesley  at 
any  time  plunged  into  vicious  conduct,  yet  he  fell  into  a 
frivolous  mood.  His  conscience  lost  both  alertness  and 
authority.  And  by  the  time  he  had  reached  twenty-two — 
and  for  years  before  that,  indeed — the  purely  imitative 
piety  of  his  childhood  had,  even  to  his  own  consciousness, 
become  a  failure. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN    SEARCH   OF    A   THEOLOGY 

AT  the  beginning  of  1725  Wesley,  with  a  successful 
University  course  behind  him,  had  to  choose  a  career. 
His  Fellowship  naturally  opened  the  gate  to  one  of  the 
three  learned  professions,  the  law,  medicine,  or  the 
Church.  Wesley  had  in  a  supreme  degree  some,  at  least, 
of  the  gifts  which  make  a  great  lawyer;  and  he  had 
strong  natural  tastes,  as  after  years  showed,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  medicine.  He  dabbled  in  physic,  indeed,  through- 
out his  whole  life.  But  on  the  whole  the  Church  was 
for  him  inevitable.  The  forces  of  heredity,  the  whole 
pressure  of  his  training,  and  certain  qualities  of  natural 
temperament  carried  him  in  that  direction.  There  were 
college  livings,  too,  and  livings  in  the  gift  of  Charter- 
house, that  made  the  outlook  cheerful.  His  father  had 
been  pressing  him  in  this  direction ;  and  early  in  the 
year  Wesley  wrote  to  Epworth  saying  he  was  disposed 
to  take  Orders. 

The  choice  was  for  him  of  supreme  importance,  since 
it  definitely  threw  his  life  into  the  currents  of  religion. 
Charles  Wesley,  when  tracing  the  forces  which  turned 
his  mind  in  the  same  direction,  says,  "  Diligence  led  me 
into  serious  thinking."  The  earnestness  with  which  he 
bent  himself  to  study  awakened,  as  though  with  kindred 
but  deeper  vibrations,  all  his  higher  faculties.  And  with 
his  brother  John  the  decision  to  enter  Holy  Orders  made 
him  look  at  religion  with  new  eyes.  Later  Wesley  taught 
his  Church  that  conversion  was  the  essential  pre-requisite 
for  the  ministerial  office ;  but  hi  his  own  case  that  order 
was  inverted.  He  decided  to  take  Holy  Orders,  and 
then  betook  himself  to  "  serious  thinking "  to  discover 
what  spiritual  fitness  he  possessed  for  the  calling  he  had 
selected  ! 

It  is   curious  to   read   his  father's  discussion  of    the 

61 


62  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

motives  proper  to  a  candidate  for  the  great  office  of  the 
Christian  ministry.    He  writes  : — 

"  My  thoughts  are :  if  it  is  no  harm  to  desire  getting  into  that 
office,  even  as  Eli's  sons,  to  eat  a  piece  of  bread,  yet  certainly  a 
desire  and  an  intention  to  lead  a  stricter  life,  and  a  belief  that  one 
should  do  so,  is  a  better  reason.  Though  this  should  by  all  means 
be  begun  before,  or  ten  to  one  it  will  deceive  us  afterwards." 

This  seems  a  curiously  inadequate  account  of  the 
spiritual  equipment  necessary  for  one  taking  up  an  office 
so  great.  His  mother  strikes  a  little  loftier  note : — 

"  DEAR  JAOKY, — The  alteration  of  your  temper  has  occasioned 
me  much  speculation.  I,  who  am  apt  to  be  sanguine,  hope  it  may 
proceed  from  the  operations  of  God's  Holy  Spirit,  that  by  taking 
away  your  relish  of  sensual  enjoyments  He  may  prepare  and  dis- 
pose your  mind  for  a  more  serious  and  close  application  to  things 
of  a  more  sublime  and  spiritual  nature.  If  it  be  so,  happy  are 
you  if  you  cherish  those  dispositions,  and  now  in  good  earnest 
resolve  to  make  religion  the  business  of  your  life.  .  .  .  Now  I 
mention  this,  it  calls  to  mind  your  letter  to  your  father  about 
taking  Orders.  I  was  much  pleased  with  it,  and  liked  the  pro- 
posal well.  .  .  '.  I  approve  the  disposition  of  your  mind  and 
think  the  sooner  you  are  a  deacon  the  better ;  because  it  may  be 
an  inducement  to  greater  application  in  the  study  of  practical 
divinity,  which  I  humbly  conceive  is  the  best  study  for  candidates 
for  Orders." 

Mrs.  Wesley,  after  her  fashion,  proposes  that  her  son 
should  instantly  proceed  to  interrogate  himself,  "  that 
you  may  know  whether  you  have  a  reasonable  hope  of 
salvation — that  is,  whether  you  are  hi  a  state  of  faith 
and  repentance  or  not.  If  you  are,"  she  says,  "  the  satis- 
faction of  knowing  it  will  abundantly  reward  your  pains. 
If  not,  you  will  find  a  more  reasonable  occasion  for  tears 
than  can  be  met  with  in  a  tragedy." 

This  is  good  advice,  no  doubt;  but  here  again  is  the 
same  odd  inversion  of  the  true  spiritual  order.  The 
ministerial  office  comes  first,  and  fitness  for  it  afterwards ! 
Her  son  is  not  to  take  Orders  because  he  has  the  neces- 
sary equipment  of  practical  divinity ;  he  is  to  take  Orders 
in  order  that  he  may  study  practical  divinity. 

Wesley,   however,   having  decided   on   his   career,   set 


IN   SEARCH   OF    A   THEOLOGY  63 

himself  with  characteristic  thoroughness  to  prepare  for 
it.  His  own  record  is:  "When  I  was  about  twenty-two 
my  father  pressed  me  to  enter  into  Holy  Orders.  I 
began  to  alter  the  whole  form  of  my  conversation  and  to 
set  in  earnest  to  enter  upon  a  new  life." 

A  student,  familiar  with  books,  and  accustomed  to 
approach  everything  from  the  literary  side,  he  betook 
himself  to  devotional  literature ;  and  three  writers,  widely 
separated  from  each  other  in  time,  and  very  diverse  in 
genius  and  atmosphere  —  Thomas  a  Kempis,  Jeremy 
Taylor,  and  William  Law  —  profoundly  influenced  him. 
Great,  subtle,  far-reaching  is  the  power  of  a  good  book ! 
In  a  sense,  as  Milton  taught,  it  is  an  immortal  force. 
The  hand  that  wrote  it,  the  brains  in  which  it  was  con- 
ceived, turn  to  dust;  but  the  book  lives,  and  sings,  or 
instructs,  or  warns,  ever  new  generations  of  readers.  The 
De  Imitatione  Christi  has  been  printed  in  more  lan- 
guages, has  found  more  readers,  and  perhaps  has  influ- 
enced more  lives,  than  any  other  book  save  the  Bible. 
Who  actually  wrote  it  is  still  matter  for  dispute;  but 
that  nameless  monk  in  his  far-off  cell,  who  into  the 
sentences  of  the  Imitatio  distilled,  in  Dean  Milman's 
words,  "  all  that  is  elevating  and  passionate  hi  all  the 
older  mystics,"  first  stirred,  across  three  centuries,  deep 
religious  feeling  in  Wesley's  heart.  As  he  read  the  im- 
mortal book,  "  I  began  to  see,"  he  says,  "  that  true  religion 
was  seated  in  the  neart,  and  that  God's  law  extended  to 
all  our  thoughts  as  well  as  words  and  actions.  ...  I  set 
apart  an  hour  or  two  a  day  for  religious  retirement.  I 
communicated  every  week ;  I  watched  against  all  sin, 
whether  in  word  or  deed.  ...  So  that  now  doing  so  much 
and  living  so  good  a  life  I  doubted  not  that  I  was  a  good 
Christian." 

Jeremy  Taylor  influenced  Wesley  almost  as  profoundly 
as  did  Thomas  a  Kempis.  And  yet  no  contrast  could 
well  be  greater  than  that  betwixt  the  two  minds :  Wesley 
with  his  logic,  ice-clear  and  ice-cold,  and  his  scorn  of 
rhetoric ;  and  Jeremy  Taylor,  "  the  golden  -  mouthed 
preacher,"  with  his  more  than  tropical  tangle  of  eloquence. 
Jeremy  Taylor  has  been  called  "  the  Shakespeare  of  theo- 
logy." De  Quincey  tells  how  he  once  began  an  elaborate 
Life  of  the  great  divine,  but  never  got  farther  than  the 


64 

first  sentence — "Jeremy  Taylor,  the  most  eloquent  and 
the  subtlest  of  Christian  philosophers,  was  the  son  of  a 
barber  and  the  son-in-law  of  a  king."  But  De  Quincey, 
himself  one  of  the  supreme  masters  of  style  in  English 
literature,  is  never  tired  of  singing  the  praises  of  Jeremy 
Taylor's  prose.  He  classes  him  with  the  author  of  "  Urn 
Burial"  and  with  Jean  Paul  Bichter,  as  the  richest,  the 
most  dazzling,  and  the  most  captivating  of  rhetoricians. 
And  certainly  the  man  who  amid  the  tumult  and  strife 
of  the  Civil  War  wrote  "  The  Rules  of  Holy  Living  and 
Holy  Dying"  had,  perhaps,  the  most  melodious  voice  in 
all  Christian  literature.  It  is  still  audible  above  the 
strife  of  parties  and  the  clash  of  battle  amid  which 
Jeremy  Taylor  moved. 

His  scholarship,  his  spiritual  glow,  his  gentle  spirit  for 
a  time  took  captive  Wesley's  mind.  And  yet  Jeremy 
Taylor  must  have  exercised,  in  some  respects,  an  evil 
influence  on  Wesley.  Coleridge  declares  that  the  author 
of  "  Holy  Living  and  Holy  Dying  "  was  "  half  a  Socinian 
in  heart,"  and  it  is  certain  that  the  Cross  of  Christ  can  be 
seen  but  very  dimly  through  the  golden  mist  of  Taylor's 
rhetoric.  He  was  a  prottge  of  Archbishop  Laud,  and  his 
High  Churchmanship  was  so  extreme  that,  like  other 
and  more  modern  Churchmanship  of  the  same  altitude, 
it  is  almost  undistinguishable  from  Popery.  Coleridge 
complains  that  "  he  never  speaks  with  the  slightest  symp- 
toms of  affection  or  respect  of  Luther,  Calvin,  or  any  other 
of  the  great  reformers,  but  he  saints  every  trumpery 
monk  or  friar  down  to  the  very  latest  canonisations  of 
the  modern  Popes."  Jeremy  Taylor  did  not  help  to 
clarify  Wesley's  theology;  he  served,  indeed,  to  give  it 
an  added  flavour  of  sacerdotalism. 

But  Wesley  took  neither  himself  nor  his  teachers  on 
trust.  He  interrogated  them,  as  he  did  his  own  spiritual 
condition,  with  tireless  diligence.  His  common-sense,  for 
example,  rejects  the  ascetic  element  in  the  De  Imitatione 
Christi,  its  quarrel  with  innocent  gladness,  its  exaggera- 
tion of  the  spiritual  value  of  sorrow.  "I  cannot  think," 
he  tells  his  mother,  "that  when  God  sent  us  into  the 
world  He  had  irreversibly  decreed  that  we  should  be 
perpetually  miserable  in  it."  His  father,  on  the  whole, 
agreed  with  a  Kempis.  "Mortification,"  he  said,  "was 


IN   SEAECH    OF   A    THEOLOGY  65 

still  an  indispensable  Christian  duty."  But  after  all,  the 
heroic  strain  in  the  Imitatio  was  too  high  for  the  good 
little  rector,  and,  with  a  flash  of  unusual  wisdom,  he  refers 
John  to  his  mother,  saying,  "  she  had  leisure  to  bolt  the 
matter  to  the  bran." 

Mrs.  Wesley  discusses  with  exquisite  good  sense  the 
whole  ethics  of  pleasure : — 

"  Would  you  judge  of  the  lawfulness  or  unlawfulness  of  pleasure 
take  this  rule  :  Whatever  weakens  your  reason,  impairs  the  tender- 
ness of  your  conscience,  obscures  your  sense  of  God,  or  takes  off 
the  relish  of  spiritual  things — in  short,  whatever  increases  the 
strength  and  authority  of  your  body  over  your  mind,  that  thing 
is  sin  to  you,  however  innocent  it  may  be  in  itself." 

The  wisest  of  casuists  might  find  it  difficult  to  better 
that  interpretation  of  human  duty ! 

Wesley,  with  a  fine  readiness,  absorbed  what  was 
spiritually  wholesome  in  his  new  teachers.  From  the 
Imitatio  Christi  he  learned  something  of  the  altitude 
and  range  of  the  spiritual  life.  After  reading  it  he  says, 
"  I  saw  that  giving  even  all  my  life  to  God,  supposing  it 
possible  to  do  this,  would  profit  me  nothing,  unless  I  gave 
my  heart;  yea,  all  my  heart  to  Him."  Jeremy  Taylor 
taught  him  the  great  truth,  on  which  he  dwells  with 
such  tender  and  moving  emphasis,  the  need  of  absolute 
simplicity  and  purity  of  intention.  "Instantly,"  says 
Wesley,  "I  resolved  to  dedicate  all  my  life  to  God — all 
my  thoughts  and  words  and  actions — being  thoroughly 
convinced  that  there  is  no  medium,  but  that  every  part 
of  my  life — not  some  only — must  be  either  a  sacrifice  to 
God  or  myself;  that  is  the  devil." 

But  he  questions,  with  invincible  good  sense,  Jeremy 
Taylor's  exaggeration  of  the  duty  of  humility.  Was  it 
really  a  form  of  piety  to  believe  ourselves  to  be  worse 
than  anybody  else  ?  "  It  is  all,"  argues  Wesley,  "  a  ques- 
tion of  fact.  One,  for  instance,  who  is  in  company  with  a 
freethinker  cannot  avoid  knowing  himself  to  be  the  better 
of  the  two." 

At  this  stage,  however,  Wesley  was  more  concerned,  on 
the  whole,  with  making  his  theology  clear,  than  with  his 
own  spiritual  condition.  He  discusses  a  hundred  vexed 
questions  in  theology  with  his  father  and  mother ;  and  it 

E 


66 

is  difficult  to  believe  that  at  that  time  any  other  corre- 
spondence in  England  could  rival,  in  mingled  sense  and 
seriousness,  the  letters  which  passed  betwixt  John  Wesley 
in  Oxford  and  the  family  circle  in  the  Epworth  Rectory. 
His  mother  was,  perhaps,  the  best  theologian  in  the  group, 
though  her  theology  was  not  always  of  the  evangelical 
type. 

John  Wesley  discusses  the  perplexed  question  of  pre- 
destination with  her.  "  That  doctrine,"  she  tells  him,  "  as 
maintained  by  the  rigid  Calvinists,  is  very  shocking,  and 
ought  to  be  abhorred;  because  it  directly  charges  the 
most  high  God  with  being  the  Author  of  sin."  "  God  has 
an  election,"  she  argues,  "  but  it  is  founded  on  His  fore- 
knowledge, and  does  in  no  wise  derogate  from  the  glory 
of  God's  free  grace,  nor  impair  the  liberty  of  man."  Years 
afterwards,  Wesley  printed  his  mother's  letters  in  the 
Arminian  Magazine,  and  they,  no  doubt,  helped  to  shape 
his  theology,  and  that  of  the  Church  he  founded. 

Mother  and  son  again  held  debate  on  such  questions 
as  the  true  nature  of  faith,  of  repentance,  of  the  Trinity ; 
the  damnatory  clauses  in  the  Athanasian  Creed;  future 
punishment,  the  doctrine  of  assurance,  &c.  &c.  On  the 
subject  of  assurance  Wesley,  at  this  stage,  held  sounder 
views  than  his  mother.  "An  absolute  certainty  that  God 
has  forgiven  us,"  she  says,  "you  can  never  have  until  you 
come  to  heaven."  Wesley  replies :  "  I  am  persuaded  that 
we  may  know  that  we  are  now  in  a  state  of  salvation, 
since  that  is  expressly  promised  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  to 
our  sincere  endeavours."  But  here  he  falters,  and  misses 
— as  for  the  next  thirteen  years  he  missed — the  great 
truth  of  the  direct  attestation  the  Holy  Spirit  bears  in  the 
believing  soul  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  "  We  are  surely," 
says  John  Wesley,  "able  to  judge  of  our  own  sincerity"; 
and  the  estimate  the  human  soul  is  able  to  form  of  its 
own  "sincerity"  is,  apparently,  the  sole  foundation  on 
which  could  be  built  the  rejoicing  certainty  that  sin  is 
forgiven ! 

Wesley  was  ordained  deacon  on  September  19,  1725; 
he  preached  his  first  sermon  at  South  Leigh,  a  small 
village  near  Witney.  Later,  he  spent  the  summer  of 
1726  at  Epworth,  preaching  for  his  father  and  pursuing 
his  own  studies. 


IN    SEARCH    OF    A    THEOLOGY  67 

For  his  parents  this  must  have  been  a  delightful  visit. 
John  Wesley  had  upon  him  the  fresh  glories  of  his  fellow- 
ship ;  life  for  him  was  opening  very  brilliantly ;  he  was  of 
blameless  character,  and  stood  on  the  threshold  of  the 
most  sacred  office  a  human  being  can  hold.  His  father 
had  written  to  him  a  few  months  before,  when  a  new  note 
of  gravity  had  stolen  into  his  son's  letters :  "  If  you  be  but 
what  you  write,  you  and  I  shall  be  happy."  And  now  the 
father  could  judge  that  his  son  was  "what  he  wrote." 

By  the  fireside  of  the  rectory,  every  evening,  Wesley 
sat  with  his  father  and  mother  and  held  high  debate  on 
great  themes.  He  notes  in  his  diary  the  range  of  topics 
over  which  the  talk  wandered  :  how  to  increase  our  faith, 
our  hope,  our  love  of  God :  prudence,  sincerity,  simplicity, 
&c.  To  a  mother  of  Susannah  Wesley's  grave  and  lofty 
bent,  those  fireside  talks  with  her  brilliant  and  accom- 
plished son,  who  came  to  her  from  the  atmosphere  of  a 
University,  and  was  plainly  on  the  entrance  of  a  great 
career,  must  have  been  an  exquisite  pleasure. 

But  was  Wesley,  at  this  time,  and  in  the  clear  Scrip- 
tural sense  of  the  word,  a  Christian?  He  shall  answer 
for  himself.  In  1 744  he  drew  up  a  statement  of  the  great 
evangelical  truths  which  had  changed  his  life,  and  by  the 
preaching  of  which  he  was  affecting  the  lives  of  multi- 
tudes. Then  he  looks  back  on  the  time  we  have  just 
been  describing : — 

"'It  was  many  years,'  he  says,  'after  I  was  ordained  deacon 
before  I  was  convinced  of  the  great  truths  above  recited  ;  during 
all  that  time  I  was  utterly  ignorant  of  the  nature  and  condition 
of  justification.  Sometimes  I  confounded  it  with  sanctification, 
particularly  when  I  was  in  Georgia.  At  other  times  I  had  some 
confused  notion  about  the  forgiveness  of  sins;  but  then  I  took 
it  for  granted  the  time  of  this  must  be  either  the  hour  of  death 
or  the  day  of  judgment.  I  was  equally  ignorant  of  the  nature  of 
saving  faith,  apprehending  it  to  mean  no  more  than  a  firm  assent  to 
all  the  propositions  contained  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.'" 

This  was  surely  a  very  remarkable  degree  of  theological 
ignorance  to  be  found  in  a  mind  so  clear,  and  one  that 
had  enjoyed  such  a  training !  But  the  theology  of 
Epworth  Parsonage,  with  all  its  seriousness  and  cnarm, 
was  very  defective.  And  while  men  are  to  be  judged, 


68  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

not  by  their  theology  but  by  their  life,  yet  any  grave 
misreading  of  divine  truth  must  profoundly  affect  the 
life. 

As  for  Wesley,  an  unrelenting  thoroughness  marked 
at  every  stage  his  temper  in  religion.  He  would  have 
no  uncertainties,  no  easy  and  soft  illusions.  Religion 
as  a  divine  gift,  and  as  a  human  experience,  was  some- 
thing definite.  He  possessed  it,  or  he  did  not  possess 
it.  No  intermediate  stage  was  thinkable.  And  with  a 
wise  —  but  almost  unconscious  —  instinct  he  put  his 
theology  to  the  one  final  test.  He  cast  it  into  the 
alembic  of  experience.  He  tried  it  by  the  challenge  of 
life ;  of  its  power  to  colour  and  shape  life.  He  spent 
the  next  thirteen  years  in  that  process ;  trying  his  creed 
with  infinite  courage,  with  transparent  sincerity,  and 
often  with  toil  and  suffering,  by  the  rough  acid  of  life, 
till  at  last  he  reached  that  conception  of  Christ  and 
His  Gospel  which  lifted  his  spirit  up  to  such  dazzling 
heights  of  gladness  and  power. 

William  Law,  no  doubt,  influenced  Wesley  at  this  stage 
more  profoundly  than  even  Thomas  a  Kempis  or  Jeremy 
Taylor.  Law's  "  Serious  Call "  is  one  of  the  great  books 
of  Christian  literature.  Dr.  Johnson  told  Boswell  that 
he  had  been  a  lax  talker  against  religion  till  he  read 
Law's  work.  "  I  took  up  the  book,"  he  said,  "  expecting 
to  find  it  a  dull  book,  as  such  books  generally  are ;  but 
I  found  Law  quite  an  overmatch  for  me.  That  book 
first  set  me  thinking  in  earnest."  Wesley,  late  in  life, 
and  after  he  had  renounced  Law  himself  as  a  religious 
guide,  yet  declared  the  "  Serious  Call "  to  be  "  unsurpassed 
in  the  English  language  for  beauty  of  expression  and  for 
justness  and  depth  of  thought." 

Law  lives  vaguely  in  the  popular  memory  as  a  mystic ; 
and  it  is  true  that,  as  Southey  puts  it,  "  the  man  who 
had  shaken  so  many  intellects  sacrificed  his  own  at  last 
to  the  reveries  and  rhapsodies  of  Jacob  Behrnen."  But 
if  William  Law  ended  in  mysticism,  his  earlier  years  were 
unclouded  by  that  evil  fog. 

There  was  no  hint  of  the  mystic  in  Law's  appearance — 
a  stout,  round-faced  man,  with  ruddy,  farmer-like  cheeks, 
heavy  of  foot  and  solid  of  body.  There  is  nothing,  too, 
of  mystic  nebulousness  in  his  earlier  works.  It  would 


IN    SEARCH    OF    A   THEOLOGY  69 

be  difficult  to  match  Law  for  strong-fibred  logic,  for  quick 
and  piercing  vision  into  the  flaws  of  an  adversary's  argu- 
ment. His  books  are,  for  the  modern  taste,  robbed 
of  charm  by  the  writer's  habit  of  personifying  all  his 
vices  and  virtues,  and  labelling  them  with  Latinised 
names — "  Paternus,"  "  Modestus,"  &c.  And  yet  few  writers 
have  such  a  command  of  resonant,  expressive  English  as 
William  Law.  His  terse  sentences  have  in  them,  not 
seldom,  a  salt  of  satire  not  unworthy  of  Swift. 

Law  for  some  time  was  spiritual  director  of  the  house- 
hold of  the  father  of  Gibbon,  the  famous  historian,  and 
was  tutor  to  young  Gibbon  himself.  There  is  an  element 
of  humour  in  that  association — the  combination  of  the 
mystic,  who  looked  at  the  whole  material  world  as  a 
parable  of  the  spiritual  universe,  and  the  arid  sceptic, 
who  treated  the  spiritual  world  as  irrelevant,  or  even 
non-existent.  Yet  Law's  visible  devoutness  and  sincerity 
won  even  Gibbon's  admiration.  "If  he  finds  a  spark 
of  piety  in  any  mind,"  he  said,  "Law  will  soon  kindle 
it  to  a  flame." 

The  effect  this  great  and  powerful  writer  produced  on 
Wesley  he  himself  has  described : — 

"  Meeting  now  with  Mr.  Law's  '  Christian  Perfection '  and 
'  Serious  Call,'  although  I  was  much  offended  with  many  parts 
of  both,  yet  they  convinced  me  more  than  ever  of  the  exceeding 
height  and  depth  and  breadth  of  the  law  of  God.  The  light 
flowed  in  so  mightily  upon  my  soul  that  everything  appeared  in 
a  new  view.  I  cried  to  God  for  help ;  resolved  as  I  had  never 
done  before,  not  to  prolong  the  time  of  obeying  Him.  And,  by 
my  continued  endeavour  to  keep  His  whole  law  inward  and  out- 
ward to  the  utmost  of  my  power,  I  was  persuaded  that  I  should 
be  accepted  of  Him,  and  that  I  was  even  then  in  a  state  of 
salvation." 


CHAPTER    III 

A    DEEPER   NOTE 

IT  is  possible,  at  this  stage,  to  assess  roughly  the  influ- 
ence that  these  three  great  books  had  on  Wesley.  They 
aroused  his  conscience.  They  gave  him  a  transfiguring 
vision  of  the  awful  sweep  and  altitude  of  religion;  how 
great  were  God's  claims,  how  vast  was  man's  duty.  But 
if  they  awoke  in  him  great  aspirations  they  did  not  teach 
him  the  divine  art  of  realising  them.  Their  emphasis 
rested  not  on  God's  grace,  but  on  man's  duty.  If,  then, 
they  awakened  the  conscience,  they  left  it  helpless.  The 
great  triumphant  secret  of  Christianity:  forgiveness — of 
grace,  and  through  faith — and  obedience,  under  the  forces 
that  stream  into  the  soul  through  forgiveness,  they  left 
unrevealed.  They  missed,  in  a  word,  the  order,  eternal 
and  changeless,  which  God  has  fixed  for  the  spiritual 
life.  In  that  order,  forgiveness  comes  first.  It  is  the 
Beautiful  Gate  into  the  temple  of  a  godly  life.  Or,  to 
vary  the  metaphor,  it  is  the  channel  through  which 
stream  into  the  forgiven  soul  all  those  great  forces  of 
love  and  gratitude  which  make  obedience  not  merely 
possible,  but  inevitable  and  exultant. 

It  is  quite  true  that  in  each  of  these  great  books  stray 
phrases  are  found  which  are  as  evangelical  as  anything 
in  Charles  Wesley's  most  triumphant  hymns,  or  in  George 
Whitefield's  most  passionate  appeals.  Law,  for  example, 
told  Wesley,  "You  would  have  a  philosophical  religion; 
but  there  can  be  no  such  thing.  Religion  is  the  most 
simple  thing  in  the  world.  It  is  only  'We  love  Him 
because  He  first  loved  us.' "  What  words  could  go  more 
directly  to  the  heart  of  Christianity!  St.  John  might 
have  written  them;  St.  Paul  would  have  countersigned 
them. 

But  all  the  effective  emphasis  of  Law's  writings  lies 
elsewhere.'  And  the  strength  of  the  three  great  books, 

70 


A    DEEPER   NOTE  71 

which  so  powerfully  influenced  Wesley  at  this  stage  of 
his  spiritual  development,  lies  in  the  affirmation,  we 
repeat,  not  so  much  of  divine  grace,  as  of  human  obli- 
gation. They  clothed  the  great  ethics  of  Christianity 
with  more  imperious  authority  to  Wesley's  conscience; 
but  they  failed  to  teach  the  special  message  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  relation  of  the  personal  soul  to  the  personal 
Saviour.  So  they  left  him  bankrupt  of  that  spiritual 
energy,  flowing  direct  from  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  alone 
brings  the  lofty  ethics  of  the  New  Testament  within  the 
realm  of  human  possibility. 

Wesley  returned  to  Oxford  in  September  1726,  and 
took  his  degree  of  Master  of  Arts  in  1727.  In  August  of 
the  same  year  he  became  his  father's  curate  at  Epworth 
and  Wroote,  until  on  November  22,  1729,  he  was  recalled 
to  Oxford.  Wesley  thus  had  more  than  two  years  of 
actual  parish  work  as  his  father's  curate.  He  possessed 
what  would  be  almost  universally  regarded  as  pre-eminent 
endowments  for  success  in  that  work.  He  was  a  scholar, 
a  gentleman,  with  a  trained  brain,  a  tireless  body,  a  match- 
less faculty  for  crystalline  speech,  an  intense  zeal,  and  a 
conception  of  religious  duty  almost  austere  in  its  thorough- 
ness. He  had,  that  is  to  say,  all  the  human  qualifications 
for  success  as  a  minister  in  at  least  as  high  a  degree  as 
at  any  sta^e  of  his  whole  life.  And  yet  he  failed,  failed 
utterly  and  consciously — failed  exactly  as  he  afterwards 
failed  at  Georgia !  He  had  not  learned  the  first  letter  in 
the  alphabet  of  success.  He  drew  no  crowds.  He  alarmed 
no  consciences.  He  influenced  no  lives.  His  own  summary 
of  his  work  at  that  time  is :  "I  preached  much,  but  saw 
no  fruit  of  my  labour.  Indeed,  it  could  not  be  that  I 
should,  for  I  neither  laid  the  foundation  of  repentance 
nor  of  believing  the  Gospel,  taking  it  for  granted  that 
all  to  whom  I  preached  were  believers,  and  tnat  many  of 
them  needed  no  repentance." 

Wesley's  complete  failure  at  this  stage  of  his  life  is  as 
significant  as  his  amazing  success  at  a  later  stage.  During 
this  period  the  serious,  not  to  say  the  ascetic,  note  in  his 
experience  grew  more  dominant.  When  he  came  into 
residence  at  Lincoln  College  he  writes:  "Entering  now 
upon  a  new  world,  I  resolved  to  have  no  acquaintance 
by  chance,  but  by  choice,  and  to  choose  such  only  as  I 


72 

have  reason  to  believe  would  help  me  on  my  way  to 
heaven."  "I  should  prefer,"  he  writes  again,  "at  least 
for  some  time,  such  a  retirement  as  would  seclude  me 
from  all  the  world  to  the  station  I  am  now  in."  The 
impulse  which  makes  the  monk  was  stirring  in  Wesley's 
chilled  blood ! 

The  mastership  of  a  school  in  Yorkshire,  proposed  to 
him  at  this  time,  had  the  advantage  of  a  good  salary, 
but  it  had  what  in  Wesley's  mood  at  that  moment  was 
the  much  greater  charm  of  almost  utter  inaccessibility. 
He  had,  as  a  general  rule,  a  singularly  healthy  imagina- 
tion; but  just  now  it  was  diseased,  and  what  Wesley 
calls  the  "frightful  description"  given  of  the  landscape 
about  the  school,  and  the  difficulty  of  anybody  getting 
to  it,  fascinated  him.  The  school  was  given  to  some  one 
else,  and  his  mother,  with  characteristic  good  sense, 
writes  to  congratulate  him  upon  having  missed  it. 
"That  way  of  life,"  she  says,  "would  not  have  agreed 
with  your  constitution,  and  I  hope  God  has  better  things 
for  you  to  do." 

In  November  1729  Wesley  was  recalled  to  Oxford. 
An  alarmed  attempt  was  being  made  to  restore  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  University.  As  one  detail,  it  was  decided 
that  the  junior  Fellows,  who  were  chosen  as  Moderators, 
should  in  person  attend  to  the  duties  of  their  office.  In 
the  Oxford  of  that  day,  the  public  disputations  were 
amongst  the  most  important  functions  of  the  University. 
At  Lincoln  College  these  were  held  daily,  and  the  busi- 
ness of  the  Moderator  was  to  preside  at  them.  Wesley 
was  recalled  for  that  purpose,  and  threw  himself,  with 
characteristic  energy,  into  the  business.  He  found  it  an 
intellectual  discipline  of  no  mean  value  to  himself.  It 
increased  his  readiness  of  speech,  his  expertness  in  debate, 
his  quickness  of  vision  for  the  flaws  in  an  argument.  It 
helped  to  give  him  that  formidable  quality  as  a  contro- 
versialist which  served  him  so  well  in  later  and  more 
stormy  years. 

Wesley  remained  in  Oxford  from  November  22,  1729, 
till  he  left  for  Georgia,  on  October  6,  1735.  These  six 
years  were,  for  Wesley  himself,  years  of  striving  without 
attaining ;  of  great  aspirations,  and  of  great  spiritual 
defeats.  He  was  living,  as  some  one  has  said,  in  the 


A   DEEPER   NOTE  73 

seventh  chapter  of  Romans  and  had  not  yet  reached 
the  eighth !  And  in  those  six  fateful  years — years  in 
which  Wesley  was  practising  the  self-denial  of  an  ascetic, 
and  burning  with  the  zeal  of  a  fanatic — and  all  on  a 
High  Church  theology  —  Methodism  was  born !  For 
Methodism,  it  must  never  be  forgotten,  shares  and  re- 
flects all  the  spiritual  stages  of  its  founder.  It  began 
in  the  stage  of  his  unilluminated  and  High  Church 
theology,  of  his  attempts  to  find  salvation  by  works,  to 
act  on  Christian  ethics  without  the  energy  of  Christian 
forces,  to  produce  the  fruits  of  Christian  living  while  the 
root  was  non-existent. 

When  Wesley  returned  to  Oxford  he  conceived  of  re- 
ligion as  a  tireless  industry  in  pious  acts,  an  intense  zeal 
in  the  discharge  of  external  duties,  a  form  of  piety  to  be 
nourished  by  an  incessant  use  of  all  external  means  of 
grace.  And  he  found  already  in  existence  a  tiny  society 
which  exactly  reflected  this  conception  of  religion,  and 
supplied  the  machinery  for  its  exercise. 

Charles  Wesley,  Avho  was  then  a  student  at  Christ 
Church,  had  resisted  his  elder  brother's  first  attempt  to 
put  on  him  the  stamp  of  his  own  gloomy  and  mechanical 
piety.  "  What ! "  he  said,  "  would  you  have  me  to  be  a 
saint  all  at  once  ? "  While  John  Wesley,  however,  was 
toiling  in  his  barren  curacy  at  Wroote  Charles  flung 
himself  with  new  and  serious  diligence  into  his  studies, 
and  "  diligence,"  he  records,  "led  me  to  serious  thinking." 
As  one  result  of  this  new  and  graver  mood  he  began 
attending  the  Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  every 
week.  And  in  the  ethics  of  that  day  the  whole  tempera- 
ture of  religion  turned  round  the  question  of  how  often 
the  Lord's  Supper  was  taken.  To  take  it  once  a  week 
constituted  piety — or  oddity — according  to  the  point  of 
view  of  the  critic. 

There  was  always  a  singular  charm  in  Charles  Wesley's 
personality.  His  more  masterful  brother  dominated  men ; 
Charles  Wesley  drew  them  as  the  magnet  draws  steel.  A 
little  group  of  fellow-students  gathered  round  him.  They 
crystallised  into  a  sort  of  club,  they  undertook  to  live  by 
rule,  and  to  meet  frequently  for  the  purpose  of  helping 
each  other.  This  little  group  of  ordered  lives  quickly 
arrested  public  attention.  They  took  all  duties  seriously. 


74  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

Law  of  God,  rule  of  the  Church,  statute  of  the  University 
— all  must  be  kept,  and  kept  with  exact  precision.  These 
were  startling  novelties !  The  lively  wit  of  the  University 
soon  found  a  label  for  this  cluster  of  oddities.  They  were 
the  "  Godly  Club,"  "  Biblemoths,"  "  Sacramentarians."  But 
the  ordered  fashion  of  their  lives  finally  determined  their 
title.  They  were  Methodists !  So  the  great  historic  term 
emerges,  though  the  youthful  wit  who  invented — or 
rediscovered — it  little  dreamed  that  he  had  shaped  a 
name  for  a  "great  Church  about  to  be  born. 

That  original  band  of  Methodists  was  a  constellation 
of  goodly  names:  Robert  Kirkham,  William  Morgan, 
James 'Harvey,  the  author  of  the  once  famous  and  now 
happily  forgotten  "  Meditations  amongst  the  Tombs " ; 
George  Whitefield,  the  greatest  preacher  the  English 
pulpit  has  ever  known ;  Charles  Kinchin,  of  saintly  life. 
Of  the  little  group  three  were  tutors  in  the  colleges,  the 
rest  were  bachelors  of  arts  or  undergraduates. 

Wesley,  on  his  return  to  Oxford,  found  this  Society  in 
existence,  and  already  beginning  to  attract  respect  from 
some  and  ridicule  from  many.  He  at  once  joined  it,  and 
became  its  leading  spirit.  His  standing  in  the  University, 
his  energy  of  will,  his  quickness  of  speech,  and  his  natural 
genius  for  influencing  others  at  once  made  him  the  master 
spirit  of  the  little  club.  "  I  hear,"  wrote  his  father,  "  my 
son  John  has  the  honour  of  being  styled  the  '  Father  of 
the  Holy  Club.'  If  it  be  so,  I  am  sure  I  must  be  the 
grandfather  of  it." 

John  Wesley  stamped  an  even  deeper  seriousness  on 
the  life  of  the  little  club.  He  gave  a  new  austerity  to  its 
discipline,  a  sharper  strain  to  its  order,  a  new  daring  to  its 
zeal.  The  little  company  met  every  night  to  review  what 
had  been  done,  and  to  lay  plans  for  the  next  day.  The 
sick  were  visited,  help  was  given  to  the  poor,  children  were 
taught  in  the  schools,  visits  were  paid  to  the  inmates  of 
the  workhouse  and  of  the  prison. 

This  tiny  group  of  serious  lives  grew  to  fifteen  in 
number.  Its  members  fasted  on  Wednesdays  and  Fridays. 
They  subjected  themselves  to  elaborate  self-scrutiny. 
They  multiplied,  and  drew  yet  more  tense,  the  rules  which 
regulated  the  employment  of  every  hour  and  the  use  of 
every  faculty.  Mrs.  Wesley's  advice  to  her  son  helped  to 


A    DEEPER   NOTE  75 

determine  the  physiognomy  of  the  little  society.  "  Appoint," 
she  wrote,  "  so  much  time  to  sleep,  eating,  company,  &c. 
.  .  .  Often  put  yourselves  the  question,  'Why  do  I  do 
this  or  that  ? '  by  which  means  you  will  come  to  such  a 
steadiness  and  consistency  as  becomes  a  reasonable  creature 
and  a  good  Christian." 

The  new  club  naturally  kindled  much  ridicule  :  it  soon 
provoked  an  opposition  which  grew  violent.  Here  is  a 
curious  story  told  in  Benson's  "  Wesley  " : — 

"  A  gentleman,  eminent  for  learning  and  well  esteemed  for 
piety,  told  his  nephew,  who  had  joined  the  little  company,  that 
if  he  dared  to  go  to  the  weekly  Communion  any  longer  he  would 
turn  him  out  of  doors.  This  argument  had  no  success ;  the  young 
gentleman  communicated  next  week.  The  uncle  now  became 
more  violent,  and  shook  his  nephew  by  the  throat  to  convince  him 
more  effectually  that  receiving  the  Sacrament  every  week  was 
founded  in  error ;  but  this  argument  appearing  to  the  young 
gentleman  to  have  no  weight  in  it  he  continued  his  weekly 
practice.  This  eminent  person,  so  well  esteemed  for  piety,  now 
changed  his  mode  of  attack.  ...  By  a  soft  obliging  manner  he 
melted  down  the  young  gentleman's  resolution  of  being  so  strictly 
religious,  and  from  this  time  he  began  to  absent  himself  five 
Sundays  out  of  six  from  the  Sacrament.  .  .  .  One  of  the  seniors 
of  the  college  consulting  with  the  doctor,  they  prevailed  with  the 
other  young  gentlemen  to  promise  they  would  only  communicate 
three  times  a  year." 

What  must  have  been  the  religious  climate  of  the  great 
University  when  its  heads  set  themselves  in  this  fashion, 
and  by  such  methods,  to  discourage  piety  amongst  the 
undergraduates  ? 

Wesley  met  the  attacks  on  the  little  Society  by  drawing 
up,  in  the  Socratic  style,  a  series  of  questions,  of  which 
these  are  examples : — 

"  Whether  we  shall  not  be  more  happy  hereafter  the  more  good 
we  do  now1? 

"  Whether  we  may  not  try  to  do  good  among  the  young  gentle- 
men of  the  University;  particularly  whether  we  may  not  en- 
deavour to  convince  them  of  the  necessity  of  being  Christians, 
and  of  being  scholars'? 

"Whether  we  may  not  try  to  convince  them  of  the  necessity 
of  method  and  industry,  in  order  to  either  learning  or  virtue? 


76  WESLEY   AND    HIS   CENTURY 

"  Whether  we  may  not  try  to  confirm  and  increase  their  industry 
by  communicating  as  often  as  they  can  ? 

"  May  we  not  try  to  do  good  to  those  who  are  hungry,  naked, 
or  sick  ?  If  we  know  any  necessitous  family,  may  we  not  give 
them  a  little  money,  clothes,  or  physic,  as  they  want  ? 

"  If  they  can  read,  may  we  not  give  them  a  Bible,  a  Common 
Prayer-book  ?  .  .  .  May  we  not  inquire  now  and  then  how  they 
have  used  them,  explain  what  they  do  not  understand,  and  enforce 
what  they  do  ? 

"  May  we  not  contribute  what  we  are  able  towards  having  their 
children  clothed  and  taught  to  read  ? 

"  May  we  not  try  to  do  good  towards  those  who  are  in  prison  ? 
.  .  .  May  we  not  lend  small  sums  to  those  who  are  of  any 
trade  that  they  procure  themselves  tools  and  materials  to  work 
with?  ..." 

There  is,  of  course,  a  strain  of  Socratic  irony  in  these 
interrogations.  No  one  could  quarrel  with  the  practices 
thus  described  without  making  open  war  on  religion 
itself;  and  Wesley's  schedule  of  inconvenient  and  unan- 
swerable queries  undoubtedly,  for  the  moment,  silenced  the 
scoffers.  But  if  the  diligence  of  the  Methodists  in  practical 
beneficence  increased,  so  the  ascetic — not  to  say  monkish 
— strain  of  their  personal  religion  grew  more  intense. 
John  Wesley  drew  up  at  this  time,  for  himself  and  his 
companions,  a  scheme  of  self-examination  which  Southey 
declares,  with  some  truth,  might  well  be  appended  to  the 
spiritual  exercises  of  Ignatius  Loyola.  Here  are  samples : 

"  Have  I  been  simple  and  recollected  in  everything  I 
did  ? "  And  under  this  head  is  a  swarm  of  microscopic 
tests  of  "  sincerity,"  which  the  soul  was  to  apply  to  itself. 
"  Have  I  prayed  with  fervour  ? "  Then  follows  a  list  of 
the  times  in  each  day  at  which  prayer  must  be  offered, 
and  a  series  of  tests  for  ascertaining  the  exact  degree  of 
fervour  in  each  prayer — tests  which  irresistibly  suggest  a 
spiritual  thermometer,  with  a  graduated  scale  to  register 
the  rise  of  the  mercury.  Wesley  adopted  the  practice  his 
mother  urged  of  asking,  "Have  I,  in  private  prayer, 
frequently  stopped  short  and  observed  what  fervour  in 
devotion  ? "  That  is,  the  anxious  soul  was  to  keep  one  eye 
directed  to  the  Object  of  prayer,  and  the  other  vigilantly 
fixed  upon  itself,  so  as  to  observe  its  own  behaviour.  The 
ideal  of  each  member  of  the  Holy  Club  at  this  stage  was, 


A    DEEPER   NOTE  77 

plainly,  to  keep  his  own  soul  under  a  microscope,   and 
watch  its  motions  with  tireless  suspicion. 

The  practical  tests  by  which  each  member  was  to  try 
himself  were  of  a  saner  kind;  but  the  note  is  pitched 
very  high : — 

"  i.  Have  I  embraced  every  probable  opportunity  of  doing 
good,  and  of  preventing,  removing,  or  lessening  evil?  2.  Have  I 
thought  anything  too  dear  to  part  with,  to  serve  my  neighbour? 
3.  Have  I  spent  an  hour  at  least  every  day  in  speaking  to  some 
one  or  other?  4.  Have  I  in  speaking  to  a  stranger  explained 
what  religion  is  not  (not  negative,  not  external),  and  what  it  is, 
the  recovery  of  the  image  of  God ;  searched  at  what  step  in  it  he 
stops,  and  what  makes  him  stop?  5.  Have  I  persuaded  all  I 
could  to  attend  public  prayers,  sermons,  and  sacraments,  and  in 
general  to  obey  the  laws  of  the  Church  Universal,  the  Church  of 
England,  the  State,  the  University,  and  their  respective  colleges  ? 
6.  Have  I,  after  every  visit,  asked  him  who  went  with  me,  did  I 
say  anything  wrong?  7.  Have  I,  when  any  one  asked  advice, 
directed  and  exhorted  him  with  all  my  power  ?  8.  Have  I  rejoiced 
with  and  for  my  neighbour  in  virtue  or  pleasure ;  grieved  with 
him  in  pain,  and  for  him  in  sin?  9.  Has  goodwill  been,  and 
appeared  to  be,  the  spring  of  all  my  actions  towards  others." 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  there  is  a  lofty  and  Christ- 
like  note  in  the  type  of  life  here  aimed  at,  though  the 
questions  represent  aims  rather  than  attainments.  And 
these  fine  virtues — charity,  meekness,  devotion,  diligence 
— did  they  spring  from  no  root  ?  They  were  the  genuine 
fruits  of  religion;  but  they  sprang  from  the  root  of  a 
theology  maimed  and  incomplete.  They  left  the  soul 
without  any  assurance  of  acceptance,  and  the  conscience 
without  any  atmosphere  of  peace. 

As  for  Wesley  himself,  he  toiled  in  the  routine  of 
good  works  with  a  diligence  which  can  only  be  described 
as  passionate,  and  with  severities  of  self-denial  almost 
worthy  of  an  Indian  fakir.  He  already  had  formed  the 
habit  of  rising  at  four  o'clock  every  morning,  a  practice 
which  he  kept  up  almost  to  the  day  of  his  death.  He 
found  when  he  had  £30  a  year  he  could  live  on  £28,  and 
he  gave  away  the  odd  £2  ;  and  when  he  enjoyed  his  com- 
fortable fellowship,  he  still  lived  on  £2%,  and  gave  to  the 
poor  the  remainder  of  his  income.  He  fasted  with  an 
heroic  diligence  and  severity,  which  at  last  broke  down 


78  WESLEY   AND    HIS   CENTURY 

his  health.  He  imposed  on  himself  a  taciturnity  of  iron 
quality.  His  brother  Charles  records,  incidentally,  "I 
cannot  excuse  my  brother  mentioning  nothing  of  Epworth 
when  he  has  just  come  from  it.  Taciturnity  as  to  family 
affairs  is  his  infirmity.  ...  It  was  much  that  he  told 
me  they  were  all  well  there,  for  he  did  not  use  to  be  so 
communicative. " 

What  a  contrast  this  is  to  the  radiant  Wesley  of  after 
years,  with  his  frank  tongue  and  shining  face ;  the  Wesley 
of  whom  Dr.  Johnson — to  whom  conversation  was  a  luxury 
— said,  "  I  could  talk  with  him  all  day  and  all  night,  too  " ; 
the  Wesley  in  whom  Alexander  Knox,  who  knew  him  as 
few  men  did,  found  "an  habitual  gaiety  of  heart"  ex- 
pressed continuously  in  both  face  and  speech,  and  whom 
he  describes  as  "the  most  perfect  specimen  of  moral 
happiness  which  I  ever  saw."  In  Wesley's  speech,  look, 
and  temper  he  discovered  "more  to  teach  me  what  a 
heaven  upon  earth  is  ...  than  all  I  have?  elsewhere 
seen  or  heard  or  read,  except  in  the  Sacred  Volume." 
The  difference  betwixt  the  two  Wesleys — Wesley  the 
ascetic  and  Wesley  the  evangelist — is  that  betwixt  a 
landscape  on  which  the  night  is  lying,  and  one  on  which 
the  sun  is  risen.  Knox  describes  ^Wesley  as  he  was  after 
he  had  found  the  great  secret  of  the  Christian  life.  At 
this  stage  he  was  only  seeking  it,  and  seeking  it  in  the 
wrong  direction. 

Wesley's  earnestness  at  this  time  trembled  on  the  edge 
of  mere  over-strained  fanaticism.  "I  am  tempted,"  he 
writes,  "  to  break  off'  my  pursuit  of  all  learning  but  what 
immediately  tends  to  practice."  He  seriously  contem- 
plated the  formation  of  a  society  for  the  yet  more  strict 
observance  of  saints'  days,  of  Saturday  as  a  Christian 
festival,  of  all  the  fast-days  of  the  ancient  Church,  &c. 
It  became  for  him  a  matter  of  conscience  that  the  wine 
used  in  the  Sacrament  should  be  mixed  with  water ;  for, 
says  Wesley,  "we  were  in  the  strongest  sense  High 
Churchmen."  "No  man,"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  his 
father,  "  is  in  a  state  of  salvation  until  he  is  contemned 
by  the  whole  world";  and  Wesley,  at  this  stage,  was 
diligently  qualifying  himself  for  that  contempt,  and  find- 
ing a  morbid  enjoyment  in  the  process ! 

There  is  a  strain  of  mysticism  clearly  visible,  too,  in 


A    DEEPER   NOTE  79 

Wesley's  religious  mood  at  this  stage,  and  it  seems  in 
irreconcilable  conflict  with  the  rigid  and  mechanical 
ritualism  of  his  outward  life.  Mystic  and  ritualist :  that 
is  the  strangest  combination !  They  represent  the  union 
in  one  life  of  discordant  elements.  Mysticism  and  ritual- 
ism are  not  half-truths;  they  are  contradictories.  One 
lays  supreme  emphasis  on  external  acts ;  the  other  denies 
the  external  world,  and  dwells  in  a  land  of  dreams. 

Wesley  gets  rid  of  his  mysticism  first;  startled,  as  a 
nature  so  practical  as  his  must  have  been,  by  its  funda- 
mental quarrel  with  practical  religion.  He  writes  to  his 
brother  Samuel  an  amazingly  keen  analysis  of  the  essen- 
tial characteristics  of  mysticism : — 

"I  think  the  rock  on  which  I  had  the  nearest  made  shipwreck 
of  the  faith  was  the  writings  of  the  mystics ;  under  which  term  I 
comprehend  all,  and  only  those,  who  slight  any  of  the  means  of 
grace.  I  have  drawn  up  a  short  scheme  of  their  doctrines  and 
beg  your  thoughts  upon  it.  ... 

"  Men  utterly  divested  of  free-will,  of  self-love  and  self -activity 
are  entered  into  the  passive  state,  and  enjoy  such  a  contemplation 
as  is  not  only  above  faith,  but  above  sight — such  as  is  entirely 
free  from  images,  thoughts,  and  discourse,  and  never  interrupted 
by  sins  of  infirmity  or  voluntary  distractions.  They  have 
absolutely  renounced  their  reason  and  understanding,  else  they 
could  not  be  guided  by  a  divine  light.  They  seek  no  clear  or 
particular  knowledge  of  anything,  but  only  an  obscure,  general 
knowledge,  which  is  far  better. 

"  Having  thus  attained  the  end,  the  means  must  cease.  Hope 
is  swallowed  up  in  love.  Sight,  or  something  more  than  sight, 
takes  the  place  of  faith.  All  particular  virtues  they  possess  in  the 
essence,  and  therefore  need  not  the  direct  exercise  of  them. 

"  Sensible  devotion  in  any  prayer  they  despise ;  it  being  a  great 
hindrance  to  perfection.  The  Scripture  they  need  not  read,  for 
it  is  only  His  letter,  with  whom  they  converse  face  to  face. 
Neither  do  they  need  the  Lord's  Supper,  for  they  never  cease  to 
remember  Christ  in  the  most  acceptable  manner." 

This  is  a  reading  of  religion  which  comes  perilously 
near  its  very  denial !  Wesley  quarrelled  with  mysticism 
on  another  ground.  He  was  too  keen  a  logician  not  to 
see  that  in  the  last  analysis  it  is  but  the  subtlest  form  of 
self-righteousness;  and  every  form  of  self-righteousness 
is  fundamentally  a  rejection  of  Christ  and  His  redemption. 


80  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

"  If  righteousness  is  by  the  law  " — or  by  any  form  of  human 
effort — then,  in  Paul's  tremendous  phrase,  "  then  is  Christ 
dead  in  vain."  His  Cross  is  not  merely  an  irrelevance, 
it  is  an  impertinence.  And  nothing  can  be  finer  than  the 
keen  and  penetrating  logic  with  which  Wesley  tracks 
back  mysticism  to  its  ultimate  root  as  a  form  of  self- 
righteousness. 

In  writing  to  his  brother  from  Georgia  he  had  criticised 
Law's  mystical  teaching.  Law  had  taught  him  that  out- 
ward works  were  nothing  being  alone ;  and,  he  adds,  "  he 
recommended  to  supply  what  was  wanting  in  them, 
mental  prayer  and  like  exercises,  as  the  most  effectual 
means  of  purifying  the  soul  and  uniting  it  with  God." 

Now,  "  these  were  in  truth,"  says  Wesley,  with  a  glance 
of  characteristically  keen  vision,  "  as  much  my  own  works 
as  visiting  the  sick  or  clothing  the  naked ;  and  the  union 
with  God  thus  pursued  was  really  my  own  righteousness 
as  any  I  had  before  pursued  under  another  name."  "  All 
the  other  enemies  of  Christianity,"  he  writes  elsewhere, 
"  are  trifles.  The  mystics  are  the  most  dangerous.  They 
stab  it  in  the  vitals,  and  its  most  serious  professors  are 
most  likely  to  fall  by  them." 


CHAPTER  IV 

A  RELIGION    THAT    FAILED 

THE  strain  of  such  a  religion  as  that  on  which  Wesley 
was  now  trying  to  live  was  too  much  for  human  nature. 
Even  Wesley's  tough  body,  with  its  nerves  of  wire  and 
tissues  of  iron,  broke  down.  His  body  might  have  sur- 
vived the  fasts  he  imposed  upon  it,  the  strain  of  work, 
the  grudged  allowance  of  sleep.  But  when  to  this  was 
added  a  mind  disquieted,  a  religious  consciousness  vexed 
and  pricked  with  incessant  doubts,  it  was  no  wonder  that 
his  health  failed.  It  seemed,  indeed,  as  if  the  ill-usage 
of  his  own  body  was  at  that  time  part  of  Wesley's  religion. 
In  a  humorous  letter  in  verse  which,  on  April  20,  1732, 
Samuel  Wesley  wrote  to  his  brother  Charles,  he  asks  : — 

"  Does  John  seem  bent  beyond  his  strength  to  go ; 
To  his  frail  carcass  literally  foe  : 
Lavish  of  health,  as  if  in  haste  to  die, 
And  shorten  time  t'  ensure  eternity  ? " 

His  mother,  with  a  touch  of  over-anxious  motherly  care, 
believed  John  was  falling  into  consumption.  He  had 
serious  haemorrhage  of  the  lungs,  and  was  for  some  time 
under  medical  treatment. 

Another  member  of  the  little  group,  William  Morgan, 
died  at  this  time,  and  his  death  brought  the  Holy 
Club  under  the  suspicion  of  having  killed  him  by  its 
austerities.  His  father  had  written  to  Morgan  a  fort- 
night before  his  death  complaining : — 

"It  gives  me  sensible  trouble  to  hear  that  you  are  going  into 
villages  about  Holt,  calling  their  children  together  and  teaching 
them  their  prayers  and  catechism  and  giving  them  a  shilling  at 
your  departure.  I  could  not  but  advise  with  a  wise,  pious,  and 
learned  clergyman.  He  told  me  that  he  has  known  the  worst  of 
consequences  follow  from  such  blind  zeal,  and  plainly  satisfied  me 

81  -r. 


82  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

that  it  was  a  thorough  mistake  of  true  piety  and  religion.  .  .  . 
He  concluded  that  you  were  young,  and,  as  yet,  your  judgment 
had  not  come  to  maturity.  In  time  you  would  see  the  error  of 
your  way  and  think  as  he  does,  that  you  may  walk  uprightly  and 
safely  without  endeavouring  to  outdo  all  the  good  bishops,  clergy, 
and  other  pious  and  good  men  of  the  present  and  past  ages." 

In  the  curious  ethics  of  that  age  a  "  wise,  pious,  and 
learned  clergyman"  plainly  thought  that  a  young  man 
guilty  of  teaching  little  children  how  to  pray  was  sinning 
against  all  religion !  When  Morgan  died  Wesley  was 
openly  accused  of  being  contributory  to  his  death.  This 
brought  from  him  a  long  and  noble  letter,  addressed  to 
Morgan's  father,  dated  October  18,  1732,  giving  an  account 
of  the  Holy  Club  and  its  methods.  The  letter — which 
forms  the  opening  passage  of  the  famous  Journal — is 
both  a  history  of  the  little  society  up  to  that  date,  and 
a  defence,  and  is  marked  by  qualities  which  make  it  one 
of  the  memorable  documents  of  Christian  literature. 

The  missing  qualities  in  Wesley's  religious  state  at 
this  time  are  sufficiently  obvious.  It  utterly  lacked  the 
element  of  joy.  Religion  is  meant  to  have  for  the  spiritual 
landscape  the  office  of  sunshine,  but  in  Wesley's  spiritual 
sky  burned  no  divine  light,  whether  of  certainty  or  of 
hope.  He  imagined  he  could  distil  the  rich  wine  of 
spiritual  gladness  out  of  mechanical  religious  exercises ; 
but  he  found  himself,  to  his  own  distress,  and  in  his  own 
words,  "  dull,  flat,  and  unaffected  in  the  use  of  the  most 
solemn  ordinances."  Fear,  too,  like  a  shadow,  haunted 
his  mind :  fear  that  he  was  not  accepted  before  God ;  fear 
that  he  might  lose  what  grace  he  had ;  fear  both  of  life 
and  of  death.  He  dare  not  grant  himself,  he  declared,  the 
liberty  that  others  enjoyed.  His  brother  Samuel,  whose 
letters  are  always  rich  in  the  salt  of  common-sense,  had 
remonstrated  with  his  younger  brother  for  the  austerities 
he  practised  and  the  rigours  of  alarmed  self-interrogation 
under  which  he  lived.  John  Wesley  defends  himself  by 
the  plea — in  which  there  is  an  unconscious  pathos — that 
he  lacks  his  brother's  strength  and  dare  take  no  risks. 

"Mirth,  I  grant  (he  says),  is  very  fit  for  you.  But  does  it 
follow  that  it  is  fit  for  me  ?  If  you  are  to  rejoice  evermore  be- 
cause you  have  put  your  enemies  to  flight,  am  I  to  do  the  same 


A    RELIGION   THAT   FAILED  83 

while  they  continually  assault  me?  You  are  very  glad  because 
you  have  passed  from  death  to  life.  Well !  but  let  him  be  afraid 
who  knows  not  whether  he  is  to  live  or  die.  Whether  this  be 
my  condition  or  no,  who  can  tell  better  than  myself  ? " 

In  a  letter  to  his  mother  Wesley  recites  all  the  spiritual 
advantages  and  opportunities  he  enjoys,  and  asks,  "What 
shall  I  do  to  make  all  these  blessings  effectual  ?  Shall 
I  quite  break  oft  my  pursuit  of  all  learning  but  what 
immediately  tends  to  practice  ?  I  once  desired  to  make 
a  fair  show  in  languages  and  Philosophy ;  but  it  is  past." 
What,  he  cries,  is  "  the  surest  and  shortest  way "  to  the 
peace  for  which  he  sighed  ?  "  Is  it  not  to  be  humble  ? 
But  the  question  recurs :  How  am  I  to  do  this  ?  To  own 
the  necessity  of  it  is  not  to  be  humble." 

Then  this  brilliant,  masterful,  all-accomplished  Fellow 
of  Lincoln,  his  body  worn  with  fasting,  his  spirit  weary 
with  unsatisfied  longing,  turns  to  his  mother  with  the 
gesture  of  a  tired  child.  In  the  old,  simple,  far-off  days 
at  the  rectory  his  mother  was  accustomed  to  give  an  hour 
every  Thursday  for  religious  talk  with  "  Jacky."  Wesley 
writes : — 

"In  many  things  you  have  interceded  for  me  and  prevailed. 
Who  knows  but  in  this,  too,  you  may  be  successful  ?  If  you  can 
spare  me  only  that  little  part  of  Thursday  evening  which  you 
formerly  bestowed  upon  me  in  another  manner,  I  doubt  not  but 
it  will  be  as  useful  now  for  correcting  my  heart  as  it  was  then 
for  forming  my  judgment.  When  I  observe  how  fast  life  flies 
away  and  how  slow  improvement  comes,  I  think  one  can  never 
be  too  much  afraid  of  dying  before  one  has  learned  to  live." 

Canon  Overton,  who  energetically  tries  to  button  John 
Wesley  up,  through  all  the  stages  of  his  life,  in  a  High 
Church  cassock,  contends  that  at  this  stage  Wesley  was 
a  saint  without  knowing  it.  It  is  true  that  Wesley  him- 
self, who  ought  to  know  best  about  his  own  spiritual  con- 
dition, declared  afterwards  that  he  was  utterly  ignorant 
of  true  religion  at  this  time;  but  Canon  Overton  insists 
heroically  on  defending  John  Wesley  against  John  Wesley. 
He  tells  the  tale  of  Wesley's  diligence  in  all  the  ordinances 
of  the  Church,  his  zeal  in  acts  of  Christian  beneficence, 
his  lofty  aspirations  after  Christian  grace,  and  asks  if  that 


84  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

is  not  to  be  a  good  Christian,  what  is  ?  "  If  John  Wesley," 
he  says,  "  was  not  a  true  Christian  [when  in  Georgia]  God 
help  millions  of  those  who  profess  and  call  themselves 
Christians." 

But  can  any  one  study  the  religious  experiences  of 
Wesley  at  this  time  and  pretend  that  they  represent  the 
spiritual  mood  religion  is  intended  to  create,  and  does 
create,  in  the  believing  heart  ?  Wesley  at  this  stage  was 
living  on  what  can  only  be  described  as  the  servile  theory 
of  religion.  He  had  not  yet  learned  the  meaning  of  that 
great  saying,  "  Wherefore  thou  art  no  more  a  servant,  but 
a  son ! " 

At  times,  however,  Wesley  makes  it  clear  that,  in- 
tellectually, he  held  all  the  evangelical  doctrines.  On 
January  i,  1733,  for  example,  he  preached  in  St.  Mary's, 
Oxford,  a  remarkable  sermon  on  "  The  Circumcision  of  the 
Heart."  As  a  statement  of  the  offices  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  the  human  soul  that  sermon  is  unsurpassed  for  force 
and  clearness.  It  still  forms,  indeed,  one  of  the  fifty-three 
sermons  which,  with  Wesley's  Notes  on  the  New  Testa- 
ment, constitute  the  theological  standard  of  the  Methodist 
Church  everywhere.  Here  is  Wesley's  definition  of  the 
spiritual  state  he  is  describing  : — 

"The  circumcision  of  the  heart  is  that  habitual  disposition  of 
the  soul  which,  in  the  sacred  writings,  is  termed  holiness,  and 
which  directly  implies  the  being  cleansed  from  sin,  from  all  filthi- 
ness  both  of  the  flesh  and  the  spirit ;  and,  by  consequence,  the 
being  endued  with  those  virtues  which  were  also  in  Christ  Jesus ; 
the  being  so  renewed  in  the  image  of  our  mind  as  to  be  perfect 
as  our  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect." 

It  would  be  difficult,  in  the  same  number  of  words,  to 
state  more  strongly  that  doctrine  of  "  perfection  "  which  is 
the  characteristic— and  in  the  eyes  of  many  the  scandal 
— of  Wesley's  later  ministry.  Wesley  himself,  indeed, 
says,  in  1765,  "  This  sermon  contained  all  that  I  now 
teach  concerning  salvation  from  all  sin  and  loving  God 
with  an  undivided  heart."  And  yet  the  sermon  belongs 
to  the  period  of  his  unilluminated  theology;  the  time 
when  Wesley  himself  was  afflicted  with  perpetual  doubts 
as  to  his  own  spiritual  condition ! 

In  the  sermon  of  1733  he  goes  on  to  define  the  faith 


A    RELIGION   THAT    FAILED  85 

which  is  the  secret  of  Christian  victory.  It  is,  he  says, 
"An  unshaken  assent  to  all  that  God  hath  revealed  in 
Scripture;  and  in  particular  to  those  important  truths, 
Jesus  Christ  came  into  the  world  to  save  sinners ;  He  bore 
our  sins  in  His  own  body  on  the  tree ;  He  is  the  pro- 
pitiation for  our  sins,  and  not  for  ours  only,  but  also  for 
the  sins  of  the  whole  world."  And  there  Wesley  stopped. 
But  in  1765,  when  he  republished  the  sermon,  he  added, 
with  a  significant  "  Nota  bene  "  as  a  footnote,  the  following 
passage : — 

"  It  is  likewise  the  revelation  of  Christ  in  our  hearts ;  a  divine 
evidence  or  conviction  of  His  love ;  His  free,  unmerited  love  of 
me,  a  sinner ;  a  sure  confidence  in  His  pardoning  mercy  wrought 
in  us  by  the  Holy  Ghost ;  a  confidence  whereby  every  true  believer 
is  enabled  to  bear  witness  '  I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth ' ; 
that  I  have  an  advocate  with  the  Father,  and  that  Jesus  Christ 
the  righteous  is  my  Lord,  and  the  propitiation  for  my  sins.  I 
know  that  He  hath  loved  me,  and  given  Himself  for  me  ;  He  hath 
reconciled  me,  even  me  to  God,  and  I  have  redemption  through 
His  blood,  even  the  forgiveness  of  sins." 

Wesley  by  this  time  has  got  his  pronouns  right !  These 
words  vibrate  with  the  essential  note  of  Christianity; 
the  personal  accent,  the  triumphant  cadence !  Here  the 
central  and  divinest  purpose  in  Christ's  redemption  has 
become  a  realised  human  experience.  Faith  is  not  merely 
an  intellectual  assent  to  certain  theological  or  historical 
propositions ;  it  is  the  rejoicing  trust  of  the  personal  soul 
in  a  personal  Saviour.  But  this  is  exactly  the  missing 
note  in  the  sermon  of  1733,  as  it  was  in  Wesley's  own  ex- 
perience at  that  date.  And  it  is  most  instructive  to  see 
that  little  mosaic,  on  which  is  inscribed  Wesley's  joyful 
experience  in  1 765 — an  experience  which  had  by  that  time 
endured  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century — set  as  a 
witness  amid  the  arid  sentences  of  the  sermon  of  1733. 

Another  illustration  of  the  curious  theological  oscilla- 
tions of  Wesley  at  this  period  —  the  fashion  in  which, 
while  he  grasped  evangelical  truth  with  his  intellect,  he 
utterly  failed  to  realise  it  in  his  experience — is  found  in 
the  contrast  betwixt  the  first  little  book  he  ever  printed, 
a  book  of  prayers  in  1733,  and  his  second  original  publi- 
cation some  eighteen  months  afterwards,  the  sermon  on 


86  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

"  The  Trouble  and  Kest  of  Good  Men."  The  prayers  glow 
with  evangelical  fervour.  For  vision,  simplicity,  direct- 
ness, and  beauty  they  are  unmatched.  But  in  the  sermon 
of  1735  Wesley  is  the  High  Churchman  again.  He  has 
swung  back  into  the  realm  of  sacerdotal  theology !  Per- 
fect holiness,  he  declares,  "  is  not  found  on  earth.  Some 
remains  of  our  disease  will  ever  be  felt.  Who,"  he  asks, 
"will  deliver  us  from  the  body  of  this  death?"  His 
curiously  unevangelical  answer  is  "  Death  will  deliver  us ! 
Death  shall  destroy  at  once  the  whole  body  of  sin." 

Death,  in  brief,  is  the  Christ  of  the  soul,  and  is  the 
only  deliverer  the  soul  will  ever  know !  Wesley,  it  is 
plain,  had  at  this  time  no  clear,  sustained  vision  of  Chris- 
tian truth,  verified  in  his  own  experience.  He  swings 
like  a  pendulum  betwixt  contradictory  conceptions. 

An  odd  illustration  of  Wesley's  changing  moods  is 
found  in  the  somewhat  absurd  correspondence  he  car- 
ried on  at  this  time  with  a  woman  who  in  after  years 
attained  social  and  literary  fame — Mary  Granville,  after- 
wards Mrs.  Pendarvis.  She  was  three  years  older  than 
Wesley,  a  young  and  fascinating  widow,  the  niece  of  Lord 
Lansdowne,  rich,  witty,  beautiful.  Wesley  met  her  at 
the  house  of  the  Kirkhams,  and  the  youthful  Fellow  of 
Lincoln  College  and  the  brilliant  and  fashionable  young 
widow  corresponded  with  each  other.  Wesley  labelled 
himself  "Cyrus,"  Mary  Granville  was  disguised  as  "As- 
pasia " ;  and  for  many  months  Cyrus  and  Aspasia  ex- 
changed letters  through  which  there  runs  a  curious 
mixture  of  theology,  and  of  a  personal  feeling  that 
trembled  on  the  verge  of  mere  flirtation.  Cyrus  cries, 
"Tell  me,  Aspasia,  if  it  be  a  fault  that  my  heart  burns 
within  me  when  I  reflect  on  the  many  marks  of  regard 
you  have  already  shown  me."  Then  he  exhorts  Aspasia 
to  "  pray  for  him,"  and  discusses  with  her  some  problem 
in  theology.  "  Oh,  Cyrus ! "  writes  Aspasia,  "  how  noble 
a  defence  you  make  !  And  how  you  are  adorned  with  the 
beauty  of  holiness."  Later,  Aspasia  complains  that  "  Cyrus 
by  this  time  had  blotted  me  out  of  his  memory." 

There  is  the  oddest  mixture  of  doctrinal  discussion  and 
of  very  human  sentiment  in  this  correspondence,  and 
Cyrus  plainly  was  in  imminent  danger  of  forgetting  the 
theologian  in  the  lover.  Sometimes,  indeed,  he  crossed 


A   RELIGION   THAT   FAILED  87 

the  line  ;  and  the  lady  herself — though  too  late,  and  only 
when  Wesley  had  moved  into  quite  another  realm  of 
feeling — was  visibly  more  than  willing  to  infuse  a  very 
human  warmth  into  her  letters. 

It  sheds  some  curious  light  on  Wesley's  mood  where 
the  fair  sex  is  concerned  to  notice  that  the  correspondence 
with  Aspasia  blossomed  on  the  stock  of  an  earlier  corre- 
spondence— that  with  Miss  Betty  Kirkham — a  correspond- 
ence in  which  beat  the  pulse  of  a  very  definite  and 
human  love.  Betty  Kirkham  was  the  sister  of  his  col- 
lege friend,  and  that  Wesley  loved  her  in  his  temperate 
fashion,  and  would  have  married  her,  can  hardly  be 
doubted.  Some  unkind  force — perhaps  parental  authority 
on  the  one  side  or  the  other — interfered.  Betty  Kirkham 
married  some  one  else,  and  died  after  a  very  brief  wedded 
life.  It  was  in  the  house  of  the  Kirkhams  that  Wesley 
met  Mrs.  Pendarvis.  Wesley,  in  his  correspondence  with 
Betty  Kirkham,  labelled  her  Varanese,  and  his  earlier 
letters  to  Aspasia  are  full  of  references  to  "my  V.,  my 
dear  V."  Wesley,  however,  kept  a  vigilant  and  scientific 
eye  on  his  own  emotions  as  a  lover ;  and  he  tells  Aspasia, 
"I  cannot  but  often  observe  with  pleasure  the  great 
resemblance  between  the  emotions  I  feel  in  writing  to 
Aspasia  and  that  with  which  my  heart  frequently  over- 
flowed in  the  beginning  of  my  intercourse  with  our 
dear  V." 

This  is  another  proof  that  Wesley  was  destitute  of 
any  quick  sense  of  humour.  How  could  he  expect  one 
young  lady  to  be  interested  in  the  circumstance  that  the 
business  of  writing  to  her  excited  in  her  correspondent 
exactly  the  same  emotions  which  the  process  of  writing 
to  an  earlier  and  lost  love  once  awakened !  All  through 
his  life  Wesley  never  comes  so  near  the  point  of  being 
absurd  as  when  he  is  in  love,  or  is  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
love.  Perhaps,  indeed,  he  never  felt  love  in  the  usual 
human  sense.  But  he  was  nurtured  in  a  household  sin- 
gularly rich  in  feminine  influences.  He  knew,  as  few 
men  could  have  known,  how  keen  a  woman's  intelligence 
may  be,  how  quick  her  wit,  how  tender  her  affections, 
how  clear  her  spiritual  insight.  And  all  through  his 
life  he  eagerly  sought  the  friendship  of  clever  and  pure 
women. 


CHAPTER  V 

OXFORD    LOSES    ITS    SPELL 

AN  expressive  proof  of  the  cloistered  and  self-centred  char- 
acter of  Wesley's  piety  at  this  stage  may  be  found  in  his 
refusal  to  take  his  father's  place  at  Epworth.  His  father 
was  now  old,  and  was  visibly  breaking  down  in  health. 
He  might  die  at  any  moment.  Who  should  be  his  suc- 
cessor? On  that  point  hung  practically  the  future  of 
the  Epworth  household.  The  living  was  of  value;  the 
rector  had  spent  a  considerable  part  of  his  income  in 
improving  the  parsonage.  If  John  could  secure  the  next 
presentation  this  would  ensure  a  home  for  his  mother 
and  sisters  as  long  as  they  needed  it.  The  living  was  in 
the  gift  of  the  Crown,  and  John  Wesley  was  strongly 
urged  to  take  steps  at  once  to  secure  the  appointment. 

He  hesitated,  doubted,  debated,  and  at  last  definitely 
refused ;  and  he  justifies  himself  in  a  letter  of  stupendous 
length  to  his  father,  a  letter  which  in  bulk  would  almost 
make  a  pamphlet.  A  decision  which  required  an  apology 
on  such  a  scale  must  have  been  doubtful ! 

Wesley's  reasons  for  refusing,  when  analysed,  are  all 
of  a  personal,  not  to  say  selfish,  sort.  His  first  considera- 
tion he  declares  is  "  which  way  of  life  will  conduce  most 
to  my  own  improvement  ? "  He  needs  daily  converse 
with  his  friends,  and  he  knows  "no  other  place  under 
heaven,  save  Oxford,  where  I  can  have  always  at  hand 
half-a-dozen  persons  of  my  own  judgment  and  engaged  in 
the  same  studies.  ...  To  have  such  a  number  of  such 
friends  constantly  watching  over  my  soul"  is  a  blessing 
which,  in  a  word,  Wesley  cannot  bring  himself  to  give 
up.  At  Oxford,  too,  he  enjoys  retirement.  "  I  have  not 
only  as  much,  but  as  little,  company  as  I  please."  He 
is  free  from  care;  he  enjoys  all  sorts  of  spiritual  oppor- 
tunities— public  prayer  twice  a  day,  the  weekly  sacrament 
of  the  Lord's  Supper,  &c.  Whatever  others  may  do,  says 


OXFORD    LOSES   ITS   SPELL  89 

Wesley,  "  I  could  not  stand  my  ground,  no,  not  for  one 
month,  against  intemperance  in  sleeping,  eating  and 
drinking,  against  irregularity  in  study,  against  softness 

and  self-indulgence,  unless" in  brief,  he   had  such 

aids  to  Christian  living  as  Oxford  alone  afforded.  "  Half 
Christians,"  he  declares,  would  kill  him.  "They  under- 
mine insensibly  all  my  resolutions  and  quite  steal  from 
me  the  little  fervour  I  have.  I  never  come  from  among 
these  '  saints  of  the  world '  but  faint,  dissipated,  and  shorn 
of  all  my  strength."  Except  he  can  crouch  beneath  the 
shelter  of  a  stronger  faith  than  his  own,  John  Wesley  pro- 
tests he  must  die ;  so  he  will  not  venture  from  Oxford ! 

The  question  of  doing  good  to  others  has,  of  course,  to 
be  considered;  but  Wesley  tells  his  father  bluntly  "the 
question  is  not  whether  I  could  do  more  good  to  others 
there  or  here,  but  whether  I  could  do  more  to  myself. 
Seeing  wherever  I  can  be  most  holy  myself,  there  1  can 
most  promote  holiness  in  others."  But  this  is  at  Oxford, 
and  only  at  Oxford.  It  has  been  urged  that  at  Oxford 
many  persons  "  despised  him,"  and  he  would  at  least,  by 
going  to  Epworth,  step  into  an  atmosphere  of  respect. 
But  Wesley  is  in  that  unhealthy  spiritual  mood  in  which 
persecution  is  a  sort  of  luxury.  A  Christian,  he  replies, 
will  be  despised  anywhere;  "nay,  until  he  be  thus  con- 
temned no  man  is  in  a  state  of  salvation." 

All  this  shows  that  Wesley's  piety  was  of  the  cloistered 
type.  It  dreads  the  fresh  air.  Unless  wrapped  in  cotton 
wool,  and  fed  with  a  spoon,  and  allowed  to  breathe  a 
medicated  atmosphere,  it  will  die! 

His  father  was  too  sick  to  wrestle  with  a  filial  logician 
at  once  so  ingenious  and  so  diffuse.  He  tells  his  son 
Samuel  he  "  had  done  what  he  could  with  such  a  shattered 
head  and  body,  to  satisfy  the  scruples  which  your  brother 
has  raised  against  my  proposal  from  conscience  and 
duty,"  and  he  appeals  to  Samuel  to  help  him. 

Samuel  now  ta\es  up  the  correspondence,  and  asks 
his  brother,  with  refreshing  bluntness,  if  all  his  labours 
came  to  this :  that  more  was  absolutely  necessary  to  the 
very  being  of  his  Christian  life  than  for  the  salvation 
of  all  the  parish  priests  of  England !  He  tried  to  engage 
John  Wesley's  conscience  on  the  side  of  going  to  Epworth. 
"  Are  you  not  ordained  ? "  he  asked.  "  Did  you  not 


90  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

deliberately  and  openly  promise  to  instruct,  to  teach,  to 
admonish,  to  exhort  those  committed  to  your  charge  ? 
Did  you  equivocate  then  with  so  vile  a  reservation  as 
to  purpose  in  your  heart  that  you  would  never  have  a 
charge  ?  It  is  not  a  college,  it  is  not  a  University,  it 
is  the  order  of  the  Church  according  to  which  you  were 
called."  He  had  taken  orders,  in  a  word,  not  that  he 
might  be  a  tutor  in  a  college,  but  have  a  cure  of  souls. 
"The  order  of  the  Church,"  cries  Samuel,  "stakes  you 
down,  and  the  more  you  struggle  you  will  be  held  the 
faster.  If  there  be  such  a  thing  as  truth  I  insist  upon 
it  you  must,  when  opportunity  offers,  either  perform  that 
promise  or  repent  of  it." 

But  John  was  too  alert  a  logician  to  be  caught  by  his 
brother's  argument.  A  priest  who  refused  all  cure  of 
souls  would,  no  doubt,  be  faithless  ;  but  was  it  perjury 
to  reject  the  first  parochial  charge  offered  to  him  ?  His 
conscience,  however,  was  troubled.  "  I  own,"  he  says, 
"  I  am  not  the  proper  judge  of  the  oath  I  took  at  ordina- 
tion. Accordingly,  the  post  after  I  received  yours  I 
referred  it  to  the  '  high  priest  of  God '  before  whom  I 
contracted  that  engagement,  proposing  this  single  question 
to  him :  whether  I  had  at  my  ordination  engaged  myself 
to  undertake  the  cure  of  a  parish  or  no."  The  appeal 
to  the  bishop  in  such  terms  shows  the  legal  conscience 
in  Wesley.  He  would  keep  the  letter  of  the  bond;  but 
he  must  have  it  interpreted  in  the  letter,  and  by  official 
authority ! 

His  bishop  replied :  "  No  ;  provided  you  can  as  a  clergy- 
man better  serve  God  and  His  Church  in  your  present 
or  some  other  station." 

Wesley  thus  escaped  the  net  of  his  brother's  logic ;  yet, 
ten  months  afterwards,  with  strange  inconsistency,  he  left 
Oxford  for  Georgia,  doing  the  very  thing  which  he  declared 
an  anxious  regard  for  his  own  spiritual  health  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  do,  even  though  sacred  interests — 
the  comfort  of  an  aged  father,  the  future  of  his  mother 
and  his  sisters — hung  upon  it.  His  brother's  logic,  in  the 
long  run,  proved  too  much  for  John  Wesley's  conscience. 
There  is  some  evidence,  indeed,  that  after  his  father's  death 
Wesley  did  actually  apply  for  the  living,  but  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  was  unfriendly  and  the  application  failed. 


OXFORD    LOSES   ITS   SPELL  91 

No  one  can  read  the  letters  which  passed  at  this  time 
betwixt  John  Wesley  and  his  old  and  dying  father — his 
plain-spoken  brother  Samuel  acting  as  a  sort  of  chorus — 
without  seeing  how  thoroughly  self-centred,  and  how 
wanting  in  robust  fibre  is  the  younger  Wesley's  piety 
at  that  time.  He  is  so  occupied  in  thinking  about  his 
own  soul  that  he  can  spare  no  thought  for  any  one  else. 
And  of  his  own  soul  he  thinks  in  a  fashion  at  once  so 
morbid  and  so  timorous  that  it  is  clear  he  has  scarcely 
mastered  yet  the  first  letters  in  the  great  spiritual 
alphabet  of  Christianity. 

Wesley's  father  died  on  April  25,  1735,  and  nothing 
in  the  wnole  story  of  his  life  is  so  beautiful  as  the  manner 
of  his  leaving  it.  Years  had  mellowed  him.  Time  had 
cooled  the  restlessness  of  his  blood.  Sickness  had  given 
a  new  perspective  to  his  theology,  a  new  tenderness  to 
his  spirit.  As  he  drew  near  the  mysterious  borderland 
of  eternity  his  piety  deepened ;  it  was  baptized  with  new 
influences. 

Both  John  and  Charles  Wesley  were  with  him  at  the 
last,  and,  in  a  letter  dated  April  30,  1735,  Charles  describes 
to  his  brother  Samuel  the  manner  of  their  father's  death. 
Something  of  that  strange  vision  which  comes  to  dying 
eyes  was  granted  the  old  man.  "  He  often,"  writes 
Charles  Wesley,  "  laid  his  hand  upon  niy  head  and  said, 
'  Be  steady  !  The  Christian  faith  will  surely  revive  in 
this  kingdom.  You  shall  see  it,  though  I  shall  not.'" 
To  John  he  said :  "  The  inward  witness,  son ;  the  inward 
witness  !  That  is  the  strongest  proof  of  Christianity." 

That  "  inward  witness  "  had  come  late  to  the  old  man, 
but  it  had  come.  To  his  son  it  was  then  an  unknown 
experience.  The  very  words  were  cryptic ;  they  belonged 
to  an  unknown  language.  "  I  did  not,"  says  John,  when 
telling  the  story  afterwards,  "  I  did  not,  at  that  time, 
understand  them."  Yet  what  thrilled  in  the  soul  of 
the  dying  father  was  the  very  force  which  was  later  to 
transfigure  his  son's  life  and,  through  him,  to  change  the 
whole  religious  history  of  England. 

Just  as  the  end  came  John  stooped  over  his  father 
and  asked  him  whether  he  was  not  near  heaven  ?  "  He 
answered,"  writes  Charles,  "  distinctly  and  with  the  utmost 
of  hope  and  triumph  that  could  be  expressed  in  sounds : 


92  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

'Yes,  I  am.'  Just  after  my  brother  had  used  the  com- 
mendatory prayer  he  spoke  again :  '  Now  you  have  done 
all.'  These  were  his  last  words." 

Mr.  Wesley  left  his  household  but  ill  provided  for.  He 
rented  a  few  fields,  and  the  live  stock  upon  them  was 
seized  on  the  very  day  of  his  funeral,  by  a  hard  landlord, 
for  the  unpaid  rent.  Charles  had  not  yet  taken  his 
degree;  John's  fellowship  scarcely  did  more  than  pro- 
vide for  his  own  wants,  and  the  burden  of  the  support  of 
Mrs.  Wesley  and  her  unmarried  daughters  fell  on  Samuel. 
The  father  had  finished,  before  his  death,  his  tnagnum 
opus — a  commentary  on  the  Book  of  Job — and  Wesley 
went  to  London  to  present  a  copy  to  the  Queen. 

While  in  London  Dr.  Burton,  of  Corpus  Christi  College 
who  was  one  of  the  trustees  of  the  new  colony  of  Georgia, 
introduced  him  to  General  Oglethorpe,  the  founder  of  the 
colony.  The  trustees  were  at  that  moment  in  search  of  a 
clergyman  who  could  preach  to  the  settlers  and  to  the 
Indians  in  their  neighbourhood,  and  Wesley  seemed  to 
them  to  be  exactly  the  man  for  the  post.  He  was  a 
scholar,  a  clergyman  of  known  and  intense  zeal,  with 
a  passion  for  religious  work  which,  to  cooler  tempera- 
ments, seemed  fanaticism.  It  might  have  been  supposed 
that  the  logic  which  forbade  John  Wesley  leaving  Oxford 
to  go  to  Epworth,  on  account  of  the  risks  involved  in  a 
change  of  spiritual  climate,  would  apply  yet  more  forcibly 
to  the  new  scheme.  But  Wesley  had  unconsciously 
shifted  his  ground.  His  conscience  had  arrayed  itself 
on  the  side  of  his  brother's  arguments. 

Moreover,  University  groups  are  in  their  very  nature 
temporary.  Mere  time  dissolves  them.  The  members 
must  scatter  to  their  separate  careers;  and  this  was 
happening  at  Oxford.  Morgan  was  dead ;  Gambold  and 
Ingnani  were  about  to  accept  cures.  Whitefield,  not  yet 
ordained,  was  starting  for  evangelistic  work  in  Gloucester- 
shire. Broughton  was  chaplain  at  the  Tower.  The  goodly 
fellowship  of  the  Holy  Club  at  Oxford,  like  the  knight- 
hood of  King  Arthur's  Round  Table,  was  dissolving. 
And  Wesley,  with  other  ties  one  by  one  snapping,  listened 
with  not  unwilling  ears  to  this  new  call. 

It  is  clear,  hi  addition,  that  Wesley  himself,  if  he  had 
not  grown  tired  of  the  Holy  Club  and  its  methods,  had 


OXFORD    LOSES   ITS    SPELL  93 

visibly  lost  faith  in  it  and  them.  Its  round  of  mechanical 
prayers,  its  pious  services,  its  physical  austerities,  were  but 
a  spiritual  treadmill,  and  yielded  no  more  progress  than  a 
treadmill.  It  led  no  whither.  Wesley  had  been  on  it  six 
years,  and  knew.  At  the  end  of  those  weary,  high-strung, 
earnest  years  he  felt  there  was  in  religion  a  secret  that 
evaded  his  search,  a  strength  unpossessed,  a  joy  untasted. 
How  could  spiritual  life  be  translated  into  mechanical 
terms  and  not  perish  in  the  process  ? 

At  first  Wesley  refused  the  offer  of  the  mission  to 
Georgia,  but  it  was  with  an  accent  which  invited  its 
renewal.  He  declared  he  could  not  leave  his  mother,  for 
whose  support  and  comfort  he  was  indispensable.  Would 
he  go,  he  was  asked,  if  his  mother  consented  ?  Wesley 
thought  this  impossible,  but  agreed  that  she  should  be 
consulted.  If  he  expected  her  to  refuse  he  strangely 
misread  the  lofty  and  courageous  temper  of  his  mother's 
mind.  "  Had  I  twenty  sons,"  the  brave  woman  answered, 
"I  should  rejoice  that  they  were  all  so  employed,  though 
I  should  never  see  them  more." 

Wesley,  however,  did  not  take  even  his  mother's  con- 
sent as  final.  He  consulted  many  other  advisers,  from 
William  Law,  and  his  brother  Samuel,  to  John  Byrom  the 
poet.  All  agreed  that  he  should  go.  Samuel,  no  doubt, 
hoped  that  the  fresh  airs  of  the  new  world,  and  the  rough 
scnooling  of  a  new  life,  would  chase  out  of  his  brother's 
character  some  morbid  elements. 

On  September  18,  1735,  Wesley  agreed  to  go.  He  was 
thirty-two  years  of  age ;  he  possessed  the  best  scholarship 
of  his  time ;  he  had  practised  at  Oxford  the  austerities  of 
an  ascetic,  and  had  shown  he  possessed  a  natural  genius 
for  leadership.  The  Georgia  trustees  counted  themselves 
lucky  in  securing  such  a  man.  Many  of  Wesley's  friends, 
however,  were  sorely  disappointed.  The.Georgia  appoint- 
ment seemed  a  mere  blaclc  eclipse  falling  on  a  brilliant 
career.  Wesley,  to  justify  himself,  explained  his  motives 
in  a  remarkable  letter,  dated  October  10,  which  is  worth 
quoting  at  length : — 

"  My  chief  motive  is  the  hope  of  saving  my  own  soul.  I  hope 
to  learn  the  true  sense  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  by  preaching  it  to 
the  heathen.  They  have  no  comments  to  construe  away  the  text ; 


94  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

no  vain  philosophy  to  corrupt  it ;  no  luxurious,  sensual,  covetous, 
ambitious  expounders  to  soften  its  unpleasing  truths.  They  have 
no  party,  no  interest  to  serve,  and  are  therefore  fit  to  receive  the 
Gospel  in  its  simplicity.  They  are  as  little  children — humble, 
willing  to  learn,  and  eager  to  do  the  will  of  God. 

"  A  right  faith  will,  I  trust,  by  the  mercy  of  God  open  the  way 
for  a  right  practice ;  especially  when  most  of  the  temptations  are 
removed  which  here  so  easily  beset  me.  It  will  be  no  small  thing 
to  be  able,  without  fear  of  giving  offence,  to  live  on  water  and  the 
fruits  of  the  earth.  An  Indian  hut  affords  no  food  for  curiosity, 
no  gratification  of  the  desire  of  grand  or  new  or  pretty  things. 
The  pomp  and  show  of  the  world  have  no  place  in  the  wilds  of 
America. 

"...  I  have  been  a  grievous  sinner  from  my  youth  up,  and 
am  yet  laden  with  foolish  and  hurtful  desires ;  but  I  am  assured, 
if  I  be  once  converted  myself,  God  will  then  employ  me  both  to 
strengthen  my  brethren  and  to  preach  His  Name  to  the  Gentiles. 

"  I  cannot  hope  to  attain  to  the  same  degree  of  holiness  here 
which  I  may  there.  I  shall  lose  nothing  I  desire  to  keep.  I  shall 
still  have  food  to  eat  and  raiment  to  put  on ;  and  if  any  man 
have  a  desire  of  other  things,  let  him  know  that  the  greatest 
blessing  that  can  possibly  befall  him  is  to  be  cut  off  from  all 
occasions  of  gratifying  those  desires  which,  unless  speedily  rooted 
out,  will  drown  his  soul  in  everlasting  perdition." l 

This  letter  explains  exactly  what  aspect  the  Georgia 
mission  wore  to  Wesley  himself,  and  with  what  motive 
he  undertook  it.  Why  did  he  go  to  preach  the  Gospel 
to  American  Indians  ?  "  My  chief  motive,"  he  says,  "  is 
the  hope  of  saving  my  own  soul."  His  own  soul  is 
still  his  chief  preoccupation.  It  bulks,  to  his  own  dis- 
tressed gaze,  so  large  that  it  shuts  out  of  sight  all  the 
human  race  beside !  He  is  conscious  that  he  has  not 
yet  learnt  the  true  secret  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  in 
that  he  was  perfectly  correct.  He  hopes  to  discover  it 
for  himself,  however,  by  the  process  of  teaching  it  to  a 
heathen  community  on  the  other  side  of  the  world ! 

Here  is  a  missionary,  in  a  word,  who  does  not  possess 
a  creed,  but  who  is  starting  on  a  cruise  in  search  of  one  ! 
He  hopes  not  so  much  to  impart  it  to  the  dark-skinned 
savages  whom  he  is  to  teach,  but  to  extract  it  from  them ! 

The   note    of   weariness   with    Oxford,   and    with    the 

1  Wesley's  Works,  vol.  vii.  p.  35. 


OXFORD    LOSES   ITS   SPELL  95 

spiritual  processes  of  the  Holy  Club,  is  audible  through- 
out this  letter.  His  peaceful  room  in  the  quadrangle  of 
Lincoln  College,  under  the  shadow  of  the  famous  Lincoln 
vine,  with  a  little  circle  of  pale  and  studious  faces  bending 
over  their  Greek  Testaments  round  his  table — he  is  eager 
to  exchange  all  this  for  a  wind-blown  American  prairie, 
and  a  company  of  half-clad  Indians !  The  College  chapel 
with  its  pealing  organ,  its  murmur  of  incessant  prayers, 
its  decorous  and  learned  audience,  oppresses  him.  What 
he  had  not  found  in  the  atmosphere  of  an  ancient  university 
he  hopes  to  discover  amongst  the  rough  settlers  of  the 
new  land,  or — with  still  greater  hope — from  the  untutored 
savagesj  wandering  through  its  forests. 

He  drew  a  picture  of  these  delightful  savages  so  glowing 
that  one  astonished  correspondent — a  lady — exclaimed, 
with  feminine  directness  of  logic,  "  Why,  Mr.  Wesley,  if 
they  are  all  this  already,  what  more  can  Christianity  do 
for  them  ? " 

But  perhaps  the  flower  of  a  true  Christian  faith,  which 
refused  to  grow  amid  the  heavy  airs  of  Oxford,  might 
blossom  on  the  rough  soil  of  Georgia.  Wesley  would 
revise  his  creed  by  the  unspoiled  consciences  of  his  Indian 
hearers.  "  I  cannot  hope,"  he  says,  "  to  attain  the  same 
degree  of  holiness  here  which  I  may  there."  Only  ten 
months  before  he  had  declared  the  only  place  on  earth 
where  he  could  hope  to  keep  the  faintest  pulse  of  religious 
life  beating  in  his  blood  was  Oxford.  The  change  to  the 
spiritual  climate  of  Epworth  would  simply  kill  it.  Now 
he  flees  from  Oxford  as  the  best  means  of  saving  his 
soul! 

Methodism  has  sent  out,  since  then,  a  thousand  mission- 
aries to  heathen  lands,  but  never  one  with  so  strange  an 
equipment  of  motives  as  that  under  which  its  own  founder 
sailed  as  a  missionary  to  Georgia.  But  if  any  proof  is 
needed  of  the  failure  of  the  religious  creed  on  which 
Wesley  had  hitherto  lived — a  High  Church  theology,  a 
plodding,  heavy-footed  ritualism — it  may  be  found  in  the 
explanation  of  his  own  motives  which  Wesley  gives. 


CHAPTER  VI 

A   STRANGE   MISSIONARY 

WESLEY'S  misson  to  America,  as  we  have  seen,  might  be 
fitly  described  as  a  pilgrimage  in  search  of  a  religion. 
And  it  was  a  pilgrimage  which  failed!  He  embarked 
for  Georgia  on  October  13,  1735,  and  landed  on  his  return 
at  Deal  on  February  i,  1738,  thus  spending  nearly  two 
years  and  a  half  in  the  experiment.  He  emerged  from  it, 
in  the  end,  more  profoundly  dissatisfied  with  himself  than 
at  the  beginning.  The  spiritual  progress  of  those  twenty- 
eight  arduous  and  suffering  months  can  be  measured  by 
two  significant  extracts  with  dates.  On  October  10,  1735, 
before  embarking  for  Georgia,  he  describes  in  words  already 
quoted  what  he  expected  to  find  in  America : — 

"  My  chief  motive  is  the  hope  of  saving  my  own  soul.  I  hope 
to  learn  the  true  sense  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  by  preaching  it  to 
the  heathen.  ...  I  cannot  hope  to  attain  the  same  degree  of 
holiness  here  which  I  may  there." 

In  his  Journal,  when  on  his  way  back  from  America, 
on  Tuesday,  January  24,  1738,  he  sums  up  what  he  had 
actually  gained  under  American  skies : — 

' '  I  went  to  America  to  convert  the  Indians ;  but,  O  !  who  shall 
convert  me?  ...  It  is  now  two  years  and  almost  four  months 
since  I  left  my  native  country  in  order  to  teach  the  Georgian 
Indians  the  nature  of  Christianity ;  but  what  have  I  learned 
myself  in  the  meantime  1  Why,  what  I  the  least  of  all  suspected ; 
that  I  who  went  to  America  to  convert  others  was  never  myself 
converted  to  God." 

It  is  true  that  when,  many  years  afterwards,  Wesley 
reprinted  those  sentences  in  his  Journal,  he  added  the 
significant  note,  "  I  am  not  sure  of  this  " ;  but  the  words 
at  least  expressed  faithfully  his  judgment  on  himself 
when  he  landed  on  English  soil  again.  He  had  gone  to 


Dfl 


A   STRANGE   MISSIONARY  97 

America  in  the  hope  of  finding  there  what  Oxford  and 
the  Holy  Club  had  failed  to  yield  him — a  clear  religious 
experience.  He  returns  with  a  more  bitter  and  crushing 
self-discontent  than  ever.  And  the  story  of  those  months 
on  a  strange  soil  and  under  strange  skies  is  not  the  least 
instructive  chapter  in  Wesley's  spiritual  history. 

The  little  group  of  missionaries  consisted  of  John 
Wesley,  his  brother  Charles — who  held  the  post  of  secre- 
tary to  General  Oglethorpe,  the  governor  of  the  colony 
—Benjamin  Ingham,  and  Charles  Delamotte,  both  mem- 
bers of  the  Holy  Club.  Two  others,  Hall  and  Salmon, 
were  to  join  the  party ;  but  Hall,  who  was  Wesley's 
brother-in-law,  almost  at  the  moment  of  embarkation 
received  news  of  his  appointment  to  a  benefice,  and 
promptly  unpacked  his  luggage.  He  was  not  of  the 
stuff  of  which  martyrs  and  saints  are  made!  Salmon 
was  intercepted  by  his  friends  and  prevented  from  going, 
almost  by  force. 

The  voyage  lasted  from  October  14,  1735,  to  Febru- 
ary  5>  J736,  a  fact  which  shows  how  leisurely  was  the 
navigation  of  those  days.  With  the  voyage  begins  Wes- 
ley's immortal  Journal,  a  bit  of  literature  once  strangely 
neglected,  and  now  almost  over-praised.  For  naturalness, 
incident,  variety,  and  imperishable  interest  it  undoubtedly 
deserves  to  be  classed  with  "  Boswell."  Over  Boswell's 
"Johnson,"  indeed,  the  Journal  has  the  advantage  that 
it  deals  with  a  greater  figure  than  even  the  famous  lexi- 
cographer, and  the  hero  of  it  is  also  the  writer.  The 
Journal,  again,  is  not  a  book  of  gossip ;  it  is  an  autobio- 
graphy. It  gives  us  Wesley,  not  as  seen  from  the  outside, 
but  as  Wesley  saw  himself.  It  enables  us,  in  a  word,  to 
look  at  men,  books,  and  events  through  John  Wesley's 
eyes,  and  to  see  Wesley  himself  as  interpreted — and 
sometimes  as  misinterpreted — by  his  own  conscience. 

If  the  voyage  was  leisurely,  Wesley  and  his  companions 
spent  it  in  no  leisurely  mood.  They  began  by  drawing  up 
and  signing  a  solemn  bond  betwixt  themselves.  It  bears 
date  November  3,  and  runs:— 

"  In  the  name  of  God,  Amen !  We,  whose  names  are  under- 
written, being  fully  convinced  that  it  is  impossible  either  to  pro- 
mote the  work  of  God  among  the  heathen  without  an  entire  union 

G 


98  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

among  ourselves,  or  that  such  a  union  should  subsist  unless  each 
one  will  give  up  his  single  judgment  to  that  of  the  majority,  do 
agree,  by  the  help  of  God : — First,  that  none  of  us  will  undertake 
anything  of  importance  without  first  proposing  it  to  the  other 
three  ;  secondly,  that  whenever  our  judgments  differ,  any  one  shall 
give  up  his  single  judgment  or  inclination  to  the  others ;  thirdly, 
that  in  case  of  an  equality,  after  begging  God's  direction,  the 
matter  shall  be  decided  by  lot. 

JOHN  WESLEY. 

CHARLES  WESLEY. 

BENJAMIN  INGHAM. 

CHARLES  DELAMOTTE." 

Here  we  have  Wesley's  instinct  for  order  and  fellow- 
ship registering  itself.  The  missionaries  were  not  to  be 
separate  units,  but  a  disciplined  company.  In  the  last 
words  of  that  bond,  too,  we  have  the  practice  of  sortilege 
— which  runs  intermittently  through  all  Wesley's  after 
years — erected  into  a  law  and  made  the  ultimate  standard 
of  decision  in  all  doubtful  matters. 

The  voyage  was  regarded  by  the  little  group  as  an 
opportunity  for  trying  all  sorts  of  heroic  experiments 
with  themselves.  It  gave  them  a  welcome  chance  of 
shedding  old  habits.  They  reduced  the  number  of  their 
meals,  and  limited  their  diet  to  rice  and  biscuits.  Wes- 
ley, owing  to  an  accident,  had  to  sleep  on  the  floor  one 
night  without  a  bed,  and  so  made  the  delightful  dis- 
covery that  a  bed  was  a  superfluity.  It  could  in  future 
be  dispensed  with.  The  ascetic,  not  to  say  the  monk,  was 
emerging  once  more  in  Wesley's  life !  He  acted  on 
the  theory  that  his  soul  was  a  besieged  fortress,  and  each 
physical  sense  was  an  avenue  standing  wide  open  to 
his  foes.  An  appetite  starved  into  submission,  or  other- 
wise suppressed,  was  a  traitor  hanged! 

In  other  ways  the  ship  that  carried  these  strange 
missionaries  was  turned  into  a  floating  monastery.  Each 
hour  of  the  day  was  assigned  to  a  specific  task.  They 
rose  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  went  through 
a  succession  of  ordered  tasks — meditations  and  spiritual 
exercises — that  left  not  one  moment  of  perilous  space  for 
leisure,  till  ten  o'clock  at  night  when  sleep  came. 

One  incident  of  the  voyage  served  as  a  sharp  test  to 
Wesley  of  his  own  spiritual  condition.  Amongst  the 


A   STRANGE    MISSIONARY 

passengers  he  found  a  little  group  of  Moravian  exiles, 
who,  by  the  simplicity  and  seriousness  of  their  piety, 
strangely  interested  him.  A  storm  broke  over  the  ship 
one  evening  just  as  these  simple-minded  Germans 
had  begun  a  religious  service;  Wesley  describes  what 
follows : — 

"  In  the  midst  of  the  Psalm  wherewith  their  service  began,  the 
sea  broke  over,  split  the  mainsail  in  pieces,  covered  the  ship,  and 
poured  in  between  the  decks  as  if  the  great  deep  had  already 
swallowed  us  up.  A  terrible  screaming  began  amongst  the 
English.  The  Germans  calmly  sang  on.  I  asked  one  of  them 
afterwards,  '  Was  you  not  afraid  ? '  He  answered,  '  I  thank  God, 
no.'  I  asked,  '  But  were  not  your  women  and  children  afraid  ? ' 
He  replied  mildly,  '  No ;  our  women  and  children  are  not  afraid  to 
die.'  From  them  I  went  to  their  crying,  trembling  neighbours, 
and  pointed  out  to  them  the  difference  in  the  hour  of  trial  be- 
tween him  that  feareth  God  and  him  that  feareth  Him  not." 

Now,  Wesley  knew  that  he  had  not  mastered  the  secret 
of  that  strange  contempt  of  death.  "  I  have  a  sin  of 
fear,"  he  said  then,  and  for  many  a  day  afterwards.  And 
he  knew  that  the  touch  of  death  has  for  religion  the  office 
of  an  acid  on  gold.  It  is  a  test — the  most  searching  of 
tests.  And  under  the  touch  of  that  dreadful  acid  of  fear, 
Wesley's  religion  at  this  stage  failed  him. 

It  was  not  that  he  recoiled  from  the  mere  icy  breath 
of  death ;  else  would  he  have  had  less  courage  than  the 
recruiting  sergeant  can  buy  in  every  market  for  a  few 
pence  a  day.  But  there  are  mysterious  elements  in 
death,  which  make  it  the  symbol  of  sin's  triumph,  the 
crowning  act  of  sin's  dark  reign.  The  human  soul  is 
dimly  conscious  that  in  moral  evil  there  are  dark  and 
strange  forces — depths  unsounded,  relations  with  God 
and  His  universe  unrealised — and  death  brings  the  soul 
face  to  face  with  these  last  and  uttermost  elements  of 
wrong-doing.  So  it  is  that  sin  and  death,  while  strangely 
akin,  are  strangely  abhorrent  to  each  other.  And  as 
Wesley's  religion  at  this  stage  failed  to  deliver  him  from 
the  fear  of  death,  he  judged,  rightly  enough,  that  he  had 
not  yet  found  in  it  any  complete  deliverance  from  sin, 
death's  sad  ancestress. 

Directly  he  landed,  too,  Wesley  found  himself  face  to 


100  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTUKY 

face  with  the  challenge  of  what  was  to  him  a  quite  new 
type  of  piety.  He  eagerly  sought  out  the  head  of  the 
little  Moravian  community,  August  Spangenberg,  and, 
with  that  fine  humility  which  was  characteristic  of  one 
side  of  his  nature,  asked  his  advice — as  Wesley  himself 
puts  it — "  with  regard  to  my  own  conduct."  The  simple- 
minded  Moravian  pastor  proceeded  to  put  Wesley  to  the 
question : — 

"  He  said, '  My  brother,  I  must  first  ask  you  one  or  two  questions. 
Have  you  the  witness  within  yourself  ?  Does  the  Spirit  of  God 
bear  witness  with  your  spirit  that  you  are  a  child  of  God  ? ' 

'"I  was  surprised,'  records  Wesley,  ' and  knew  not  what  to 
answer.  He  observed  it,  and  asked,  "  Do  you  know  Jesus  Christ  ? " 
I  paused  and  said,  "I  know  He  is  the  Saviour  of  the  world." 

"  '  True,'  he  replied ;  ' but  do  you  know  He  has  saved  you? ' 

"'I  answered,  "I  hope  He  has  died  to  save  me."  He  only 
added,  "Do  you  know  yourself?"  I  said,  "I  do."  But  I  fear 
they  were  vain  words.'  " 

Wesley  was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  resent 
questioning  so  frank  and  courageous ;  but  it  is  clear  that 
the  challenge  of  the  plain-spoken  Moravian  disquieted 
him.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  struck  by  the 
circumstance  that  an  echo  of  his  father's  dying  words — 
"  The  inward  witness,  son,  the  inward  witness " — from 
the  lips  of  a  man  of  another  race  and  another  theological 
school,  thus  met  him  as  he  put  his  foot  on  the  soil  of 
the  new  world. 

Wesley,  however,  was  strangely  drawn  to  the  Moravians. 
He  lived  with  them  for  a  while,  and  saw  their  piety 
in  what  might  be  called  its  household  dress.  It  was  the 
most  beautiful  form  of  piety  he  had  yet  witnessed — the 
ordered  devoutness  and  diligence  of  the  Epworth  Rectory 
repeated,  with  a  strain  of  gladness  running  through  it 
the  Epworth  household  hardly  knew.  Wesley  was  present, 
again,  at  a  Moravian  service  held  for  the  election  and 
ordination  of  a  bishop,  and  he  records  how  the  grave 
simplicity  of  the  proceedings  made  him  forget  the 
seventeen  centuries  that  had  fled,  and  imagine  himself 
in  one  of  those  assemblies  where  form  and  state  were 
not,  but  Paul  the  tentmaker,  or  Peter  the  fisherman, 
presided. 


A   STRANGE    MISSIONARY  101 

It  is  curious  to  note,  however,  that  though  the  sim- 
plicity of  Moravian  piety  moved  Wesley's  admiration, 
and  the  certainty  of  Moravian  faith  awakened  his  envy, 
yet  all  this  did  not  in  the  least  abate  the  fury  of  his 
own  sacerdotal  zeal.  The  very  centre  of  his  religion 
was,  no  doubt,  unconsciously  shifting;  but  the  outer 
crust  of  the  High  Churchman — the  external  habit  of 
his  life — was  almost  more  rigid  and  austere  than  ever. 

It  was  a  strange  human  field  on  which  Wesley  was 
now  at  work.  The  colony  of  Georgia  represents,  perhaps, 
the  most  generous  experiment  in  settlement  known  to 
history.  Its  founder  was  General  Oglethorpe — scholar, 
soldier,  politician,  knight  -  errant,  philanthropist,  and 
through  it  all — for  he  was  the  son  of  an  Irish  mother — 
a  generous,  hot-blooded,  irresponsible  Irishman.  He  had 
been  a  student  at  Oxford,  a  soldier  in  the  British  Army ; 
he  had  fought  on  the  Continent  under  Prince  Eugene, 
and  in  the  British  Parliament  had  anticipated  Howard 
as  a  philanthropist.  The  condition  of  debtors  in  English 
prisons  moved  his  warm-hearted  pity.  He  secured  the 
appointment  of  a  Parliamentary  Committee  to  report  on 
the  condition  of  the  great  English  prisons,  the  Fleet  and 
the  Marshalsea;  and  as  an  mcidental  result,  the  plan 
for  forming  a  settlement  in  South  Carolina  emerged. 
The  settlement  was  vested  in  trustees;  Oglethorpe  was 
appointed  governor;  large  sums  of  money  were  raised 
to  start  the  colony ;  and  a  code  of  regulations  was  drawn 
up,  which,  if  not  in  every  detail  of  perfect  wisdom,  at 
least  represented  very  noble  ideals. 

One  clause  prohibited  slavery,  as  contrary  not  only 
to  the  Gospel,  but  to  the  fundamental  laws  of  England. 
It  would  have  been  well  for  the  Southern  States  of 
America,  and  for  the  whole  history  of  the  English- 
speaking  race,  if  Oglethorpe's  regulations  for  his  settle- 
ment at  this  point  had  been  universally  adopted.  Their 
absence  was,  later,  to  cost  the  United  States  the  most 
dreadful  civil  war  known  to  history.  The  most  difficult 
social  and  political  problem  the  great  transatlantic 
Republic  has  to  solve  would  never  have  existed  if  the 
Georgian  precedent  had  been  followed. 

But  the  new  colony  not  only  represented  a  great  social 
experiment ;  it  offered  a  refuge  for  social  failures  of  every 


102  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

kind  —  English  debtors,  Highland  Jacobites,  Moravian 
refugees,  the  wrecks  of  commerce  and  of  politics,  the 
victims  of  religious  persecution.  The  settlement  was 
thus  a  cluster  of  unrelated  human  atoms,  representing 
social,  political,  and  racial  types  of  very  diverse  kinds. 
It  was,  moreover,  planted  on  the  soil,  and  breathed  the 
airs  of  a  new  world,  with  ancient  conventions  forgotten, 
and  a  new  liberty  fermenting  in  its  very  blood.  It  con- 
stituted an  ideal  field  for  social  and  religious  experiments. 
And,  as  his  contribution  to  the  peace  of  the  new  settle- 
ment, Wesley  was  bent  on  enforcing,  by  priestly  discipline, 
the  strictest  reading  of  the  rubric !  He  would  stamp 
the  usages — or  what  he  imagined  to  be  the  usages — of 
the  first  Christian  century  on  a  community  living  in 
the  eighteenth ! 

This  proves  how  completely  the  ecclesiastic  and  the 
sacerdotalist  were  dominant  in  Wesley.  He  worked  solely 
on  what  may  be  called  the  ecclesiastical  plane.  Thus 
he  instituted  both  early  and  forenoon  services  for  every 
day.  He  divided  the  morning  service,  taking  the  Litany 
apart.  He  celebrated  the  Lord's  Supper  every  week, 
but  refused  it  to  all  who  had  not  been  episcopally 
baptized.  He  revived  what  he  believed  to  be  the 
Apostolic  practice  of  baptism  by  immersion.  He  re- 
baptized  the  children  of  dissenters,  and  refused  admission 
to  the  Lord's  Supper  to  the  pastor  of  the  Salzburgers 
because — though  he  had  been  baptized — it  was  not  done 
in  severely  correct  canonical  fashion.  Nearly  twenty 
years  afterwards,  recalling  this  incident,  he  wrote,  "  Can 
High  Church  bigotry  go  farther  than  this  ?  And  how 
well  since  I  have  been  beaten  with  mine  own  staff." 
The  indictment  against  Wesley,  drawn  up  by  the  grand 
jury  of  Savannah  in  1737,  consists  of  ten  articles,  and 
to  one  of  these  Wesley  with  every  sign  of  penitence 
pleaded  guilty.  His  crime  consisted  of  having  baptized 
an  Indian  trader's  child  with  only  two  sponsors !  "  This," 
cries  the  conscience-stricken  ritualist,  "  I  own,  was  wrong ; 
I  ought  at  all  hazards  to  have  refused  baptizing  it  till 
he  had  procured  a  third." 

There  spoke  the  true  High  Churchman,  who  not  only 
believes  that  spiritual  and  eternal  issues  hang  on 
mechanical  forms,  but  will  sacrifice  them  for  the  sake 


A    STRANGE    MISSIONARY  103 

of  the  forms!  On  Wesley's  theory  the  eternal  destiny 
of  the  child  turned  on  its  being  baptized.  Yet,  even 
at  that  dreadful  hazard,  Wesley  believed  he  ought  to 
have  refused  to  baptize  it  in  the  absence  of  a  third 
sponsor ! 

But  if  Wesley's  standard  was  severe  for  others,  it  was 
nothing  less  than  heroic  for  himself.  Zeal  for  high  ideals 
of  conduct  and  service  burnt  in  him  like  a  flame.  There 
were  no  austerities  of  self-denial  from  which  he  shrank. 
He  visited  his  parishioners  from  house  to  house  in  order, 
taking  for  that  business  the  hours  betwixt  twelve  and 
three,  when  all  work  was  suspended  on  account  of  the 
heat.  He  lived  with  the  plainness  and  simplicity  of  an 
anchorite.  In  one  of  the  schools  which  he  and  Delamotte 
taught,  some  of  the  poorer  scholars  went  barefoot,  and 
the  more  comfortably  dressed  children  looked  down  with 
contempt  on  their  unshod  companions.  To  cure  that 
pride  Wesley  himself,  for  a  while,  went  with  naked  feet. 
He  lived  practically  on  dry  bread,  and  interspersed  even 
that  rudimentary  diet  with  incessant  fasts.  The  social 
impulse  in  Wesley  reappears  hi  Georgia.  A  wise  and 
sure  instinct  warned  him  that  a  solitary  religion  would 
perish,  and,  as  at  Oxford,  he  organised  his  flock  into  little 
societies  which  met  once  a  week,  or  oftener,  in  order  to 
improve,  instruct,  and  exhort  one  another. 

But  Wesley's  ministry  at  Savannah  failed,  exactly  as 
it  did  at  Wroote,  and  with  even  more  dramatic  com- 
pleteness. It  was  empty  of  true  spiritual  force.  It  failed 
to  make  men  better.  It  bred  strife.  "  How  is  it,"  asked 
Oglethorpe,  bewildered  by  the  ecclesiastical  quarrels  that 
filled  the  air  on  every  side — "how  is  it  that  there  is  no 
love,  no  meekness,  no  true  religion  amongst  the  people; 
but  instead  of  this,  mere  formal  prayers  ? "  Wesley,  in 
Southey's  words,  instead  of  feeding  his  flock  with  milk, 
was  "  drenching  them  with  the  physic  of  an  intolerant 
discipline  " ;  and  human  nature  rebelled  against  the  bitter 
dose. 

One  angry  parishioner — as  Wesley  faithfully  records 
in  his  Journal — told  him,  "  I  like  nothing  you  do.  All 
your  sermons  are  satires  upon  particular  persons ;  there- 
fore I  will  never  hear  you  more,  and  all  the  people  are 
of  my  mind."  His  puzzled  hearers,  this  plain-spoken 


104  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

critic  went  on  to  say,  were  unable  to  decide  whether 
Wesley  was  a  Protestant  or  a  Roman  Catholic.  "They 
never  heard  of  such  a  religion  before.  They  do  not 
know  what  to  make  of  it.  And  then  your  private 
behaviour.  All  the  quarrels  that  have  been  here  since 
you  came  have  been  along  of  you.  .  .  .  And  so  you  may 
preach  long  enough,  but  nobody  will  come  to  hear  you." 

If  at  Savannah  his  parishioners  were  quarrelling  with 
John  Wesley,  at  Frederica  both  the  governor  and  the 
people  were  in  angry  feud  with  Charles  Wesley.  Charles 
was  as  austere  as  his  brother  John,  and  had,  perhaps, 
even  less  tact.  Within  a  month  his  parishioners  were  in 
open  rebellion  against  him,  and  tried  to  ruin  him  with 
the  governor  by  accusing  him  of  a  design  to  destroy  the 
colony.  The  unfortunate  governor  found  that  his  chap- 
lains were  mere  human  storm-centres.  "What  would 
an  unbeliever  say  to  your  raising  these  disorders  ? "  he 
demanded  of  Charles  Wesley  in  bitter  tones. 

Oglethorpe  was  a  man  of  impetuous  temper  and  un- 
restrained speech;  his  underlings  naturally  exaggerated 
these  qualities,  and  outvied  him  in  the  steps  they  took 
against  the  unfortunate  chaplain.  Charles  Wesley  was 
practically  denied  the  ordinary  necessaries  of  existence. 
A  bed  was  provided  out  of  the  public  stores  to  every  one 
else  in  the  settlement,  but  denied  to  the  too  zealous 
divine,  who,  while  suffering  from  a  low  fever,  had  yet  to 
sleep  on  the  ground.  "Thank  God,"  said  poor  Charles 
Wesley,  "it  is  not  yet  made  capital  to  give  me  a  morsel 
of  bread ! "  But  his  life,  he  seriously  believed,  was  more 
than  once  attempted. 

Oglethorpe  a  little  later  was  starting  out  to  meet  a 
descent  by  the  Spaniards  upon  the  new  settlement.  The 
odds  against  him  were  desperate ;  he  believed  he  would 
never  return,  and  he  took  leave  of  his  secretary  and 
chaplain  in  very  high-strung  fashion. 

"'I  am  now  going 'to  death,'  he  said.  'You  will  see  me  no 
more.' 

"  '  If  I  am  speaking  to  you  for  the  last  time,'  replied  his  secretary, 
'  hear  what  you  will  quickly  know  to  be  the  truth  as  soon  as  you 
are  entered  upon  a  separate  state.  ...  I  have  renounced  the 
world.  Life  is  a  bitterness  to  me.  I  came  hither  to  lay  it  down. 


A   STRANGE    MISSIONARY  105 

You  have  been  deceived.  I  protest  my  innocence  of  the  crimes 
I  am  charged  with,  and  think  myself  now  at  liberty  to  tell  you 
what  I  thought  never  to  have  uttered. ' " 

An  explanation  followed;  Oglethorpe,  the  most  generous, 
if  the  most  impulsive  of  men,  fell  on  his  chaplain's  neck 
and  kissed  him,  and  so  they  parted. 

"  God  is  with  you,"  cried  Charles  Wesley  as  the  boats 
moved  off.  " Go  forth,  Christo  duce  et  auspice  Christo" 

When  Oglethorpe  returned  safe  from  his  expedition, 
Charles  told  him  ne  had  longed  to  see  him  once  more  to 
give  further  explanations ;  "  but  then,"  he  added,  "  I  con- 
sidered that  if  you  died  you  would  know  them  all  in  a 
moment." 

"  I  know  not,"  said  Oglethorpe,  "  whether  separate  spirits 
regard  our  little  concerns.  If  they  do,  it  is  as  men 
regard  the  follies  of  their  childhood,  or  I  my  late  passion- 
ateness." 

Oglethorpe  could  quarrel  with  his  chaplains  furiously, 
but  he  loved  them ;  and,  many  years  afterwards,  when 
he  himself  was  a  white-haired  and  venerable  figure — the 
finest  figure,  as  Hannah  More  declares,  she  ever  knew, 
and  one  which  "  perfectly  realised  her  ideal  of  Nestor  " — 
it  is  on  record  that,  meeting  John  Wesley  unexpectedly, 
he  ran  to  him  and  kissed  him  with  the  simplicity  and 
affection  of  a  child. 

Charles  Wesley,  with  his  comrade,  Ingham,  returned  to 
England  in  July  1736,  but  John  Wesley  clung  resolutely 
to  his  post.  The  puzzle  is  that  his  High  Church  temper 
was  so  little  influenced  by  the  admiration  he  felt  for 
Moravian  teaching,  and  the  type  of  piety  it  produced. 
The  Moravians  of  Savannah  taught  mm  exactly  what 
Peter  Bohler  taught  him  afterwards  in  London,  but  the 
teaching  at  the  moment  left  his  life  unaffected.  Wesley's 
own  explanation  is,  "I  understood  it  not:  I  was  too 
learned  and  too  wise,  so  that  it  seemed  foolishness  unto 
me;  and  I  continued  preaching,  and  following  after,  and 
trusting  in  that  righteousness  whereby  no  flesh  can  be 
justified." 

The  truth  is  that  Peter  Bohler  himself,  had  he  met 
Wesley  in  Savannah,  would  have  taught  him  in  vain. 
The  stubborn  Sacramentarian  and  High  Churchman  had 


106  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

to  be  scourged,  by  the  sharp  discipline  of  failure,  out  of 
that  subtlest  and  deadliest  form  of  pride,  the  pride  that 
imagines  that  the  secret  of  salvation  lies,  or  can  lie, 
within  the  circle  of  purely  human  effort.  Wesley  later 
describes  Peter  Bohler  as  "one  whom  God  prepared  for 
me."  But  God,  in  the  toilsome  and  humiliating  experi- 
ences of  Georgia,  was  preparing  Wesley  for  Peter  Bohler. 

A  love  episode,  as  ill-managed  and  as  barren  as  were 
all  Wesley's  excursions  into  the  realm  of  sentiment, 
brought  his  stay  in  Georgia  to  a  hasty  and  inglorious 
end.  Wesley,  from  his  youth,  both  by  temperament  and 
by  the  manner  of  his  training,  was  peculiarly  susceptible — 
though  in  no  ignoble  fashion — to  feminine  influence.  In 
the  Epworth  Rectory  feminine  influences — from  the  wise, 
serene,  strong-brained  mother,  to  the  circle  of  bright- 
witted  sisters — were  supreme ;  and  Wesley,  at  every  stage 
of  his  life,  sought — what  had  been  the  joy  of  his  early 
years — the  companionship  of  intelligent  women.  But 
where  the  sex  was  concerned,  he  suffered  a  curious  par- 
alysis of  his  native  shrewdness,  and  he  managed  his  love 
affairs  worse  than  perhaps  any  other  great  man  known  to 
history. 

The  chief  magistrate  of  Savannah,  Mr.  Causton,  was 
a  man  of  doubtful  antecedents  and  violent  temper.  His 
niece,  Miss  Hopkey,  a  clever  and  attractive  girl,  fell  in 
love  with  Wesley — or  at  least  was  anxious  that  the  little, 
handsome,  and  clever  Fellow  of  Lincoln  College  should 
fall  in  love  with  her,  and  she  plainly  endeavoured,  by 
all  the  innocent  arts  known  to  the  sex,  to  hasten  that 
desirable  consummation.  She  became  pensively  religious 
to  suit  Wesley's  mood ;  attended  his  services  with  pious 
diligence;  dressed  to  suit  his  austere  taste;  nursed  him 
through  a  sickness;  took  his  advice  on  the  interesting 
question  of  what  she  should  eat  for  supper,  and  how  soon 
she  should  go  to  bed. 

Wesley  accepted  all  this  with  exquisite  simplicity,  as 
signs  of  an  angelic  character.  He  was  visibly  and  frankly 
— if  somewhat  pedantically — in  love  with  her.  In  the 
beginning  of  December  he  records  in  his  Journal,  "I 
advised  Miss  Sophie  to  sup  earlier  and  not  immediately 
before  going  to  bed.  She  did  so,  and  on  this  little  cir- 
cumstance depend  what  an  inconceivable  train  of  conse- 


A    STRANGE    MISSIONARY  107 

quences !  Not  only  all  the  colour  of  remaining  life  for  her, 
but  perhaps  my  happiness  too." 

His  companion,  belamotte,  who  contemplated  Miss 
Hopkey  through  no  nimbus  of  sentiment,  and  who  had 
not  been  at  Oxford  for  nothing,  bluntly  warned  Wesley, 
and  asked  him  if  it  was  his  intention  to  marry  her. 
Wesley — at  this  stage  of  his  life  a  chill-blooded  ecclesi- 
astic, even  when  in  love  —  found  he  could  not  answer 
that  inconveniently  direct  query.  He  determined  to 
submit  the  question  of  whether  he  ought  to  marry  Miss 
Hopkey  to  the  Moravian  Bishop — a  step  which,  to  the 
feminine  mind  at  least,  will  prove  decisively  that  he  was 
not  in  love  with  that  young  lady  at  all.  The  matter 
was  finally  referred,  for  decision,  to  the  elders  of  the 
Moravian  Church — strange  assessors  in  the  court  of  the 
affections!  They  solemnly  considered  the  case.  Wesley 
was  called  in  to  learn  his  fate. 

"  Will  you  abide  by  our  decision  ? "  Nitschman  asked 
him. 

After  some  hesitation,  Wesley  replied,  "  I  will." 

"  Then,"  said  the  Moravian,  "  we  advise  you  to  proceed 
no  further  in  the  matter." 

"The  will  of  the  Lord  be  done,"  answered  Wesley. 

It  is  a  matter  debated  still  with  great  keenness,  whether 
or  not  Wesley  had  actually  offered  himself  in  marriage 
to  Miss  Hopkey.  Moore,  his  biographer,  says  that  Wesley 
told  him  expressly,  "  he  never  actually  proposed  marriage." 
On  the  other  hand,  the  young  lady  herself,  in  the  pro- 
ceedings against  Wesley  at  the  close  of  his  stay  in 
Savannah,  deposed  under  oath  that  "Mr.  Wesley  had 
many  times  proposed  marriage  to  her,  all  of  which  pro- 
posals she  had  rejected."  But  no  one  who  reads  the 
whole  story  can  doubt  that  Wesley's  real  offence  was  that 
he  failed  to  propose  to  Miss  Hopkey,  or,  at  least,  to  do  it 
with  sufficient  definiteness. 

That  quick-witted  young  lady  learned  that  her  lover 
was  submitting  the  direction  of  his  affections  to  a  court 
of  venerable  Moravian  elders ;  she  guessed  the  decision 
would  be  against  her  and  promptly  betook  herself  to 
another  lover.  On  March  4  the  Moravian  elders  gave 
their  decision ;  on  March  8,  Wesley  ruefully  records  in  his 
Journal,  "  Miss  Sophie  engaged  herself  to  Mr.  Williamson, 


108  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

a  person  not  remarkable  for  handsomeness,  neither  for 
greatness,  neither  for  wit,  nor  knowledge,  nor  sense,  and 
least  of  all  for  religion.  And  on  Saturday,  March  12,  four 
days  after,  they  were  married.  An  expeditious  young 
lady,  this  ! 

Wesley  found  in  the  lesson  of  the  day  for  the  succeed- 
ing Sunday  the  words,  "  Son  of  man,  behold,  I  take  from 
thee  the  desire  of  thine  eyes  at  a  stroke  " ;  'and,  he  adds, 
"  I  was  pierced  through  as  with  a  sword."  Fifteen  years 
afterwards  he  was  to  write  that  same  verse  once  more  in 
his  Journal,  as  the  record  of  a  yet  more  bitter  defeat  of  his 
affections.1 

1  Wesley,  at  this  period  even  more  than  in  later  years,  had  the  habit  of 
recording  with  an  almost  incredible  diligence,  and  for  the  purpose  of  self- 
scrutiny,  every  act  of  his  life,  and  every  play  of  his  feelings.  His  Georgian 
journals,  which  still  exist,  are  examples  of  the  tireless  industry  with  which 
he  translated  himself  into  written  terms.  In  the  Journal  there  is  not  only 
a  page  for  every  day,  but  a  separate  space  for  every  hour  of  the  day.  He 
computed  and  registered  the  use  of  his  time  with  the  fidelity  with  which  a 
careful  business  man  writes  down  the  investments  of  his  capital.  And  an 
incident,  such  as  the  affair  with  Miss  Hopkey,  which  moved  him  so  deeply, 
would  naturally  be  recorded  with  special  care.  This  makes  credible  the 
somewhat  doubtful  authenticity  of  another  version  of  this  incident, 
apparently  in  Wesley's  own  handwriting,  known  to  exist.  Miss  Hopkey, 
according  to  this  story,  was  only  eighteen  years  of  age  ;  her  affections  had 
become  entangled  with  some  unworthy  object,  and  her  guardians  had 
broken  off  all  intercourse  between  the  two.  The  girl  was  in  much  grief, 
and  Wesley,  as  a  clergyman,  was  asked  to  pay  special  attention  to  her. 
This  drew  the  two  into  close  relationship,  and  Wesley  presently  discovered 
that  he  had  not  only  a  high  esteem  for  Miss  Hopkey,  but  a  tender  affection 
for  her,  an  affection  which  he  persuaded  himself  was  that  for  a  sister. 
He,  on  his  part,  was  convinced  that  a  celibate  life  was  better  for  all  men, 
and  for  himself  was  almost  imperative ;  while  she,  with  the  facile  resolve 
of  a  grieved  maiden,  had  also  vowed  to  live  for  ever  single.  Intercourse 
betwixt  the  two  was  at  its  most  perilous  stage,  when  they  took  a  trip  by  boat 
from  Frederica  to  Savannah.  Wesley's  tenderness  at  this  period  is  con- 
fessed, but  still,  after  his  pedantic  fashion,  he  tests  his  emotions  by  ex- 
tracts from  the  Greek  Fathers.  Did  he  actually  propose  to  Miss  Hopkey  is  a 
question  the  narrative  after  all  leaves  unsettled.  He  tells  how  he  sat  by 
the  camp  fire  and  asked  her  whether  she  was  engaged  to  the  person  for 
whom  she  was  supposed  to  be  mourning.  She  replied,  "  I  am  promised  to 
that  young  man  or  none,"  and  straightway  took  refuge  in  tears.  "  Miss 
Susan,"  said  Wesley,  "  I  should  count  myself  happy  if  I  could  spend  my 
life  with  you."  These  sudden  words,  he  adds,  "  weie  not  spoken  of  design  "  ; 
the  young  lady  replied  with  more  tears,  but  the  simple-minded  Fellow  of 
Lincoln  College  was  persuaded  that  if  even  he  broke  through  his  resolve 
for  a  single  life,  Miss  Hopkey  would  be  heroically  firm  to  her  pledge  of 
celibacy.  This  belief  kept  Wesley  silent ;  yet,  looking  back  on  this  incident, 
he  calls  it  "  a  very  narrow  escape."  "  I  wonder  to  this  hour,"  he  says,  "  I 
did  not  say, '  Miss  Susan,  will  you  marry  me  ? '  "  Plainly  he  believed  that 
in  express  terms  he  never  did  speak  the  decisive  words. 


J&  /f  /      X,      X/ 


A  page  from  John  Wesley's  Journal  in  Georgia, 
re  3ftss  Hopkey. 


PCBI/IiJHET)  VT  SMITH,   ELDBB,  it  Co.,  15  WATEIO.OO  PLACE,  S.W. 


A   STRANGE   MISSIONARY  109 

Wesley  naturally  contemplated  Miss  Hopkey,  when  she 
became  Mrs.  Williamson,  with  new  and  changed  eyes,  and 
that  ingenious  young  lady  probably  felt  no  longer  under  any 
obligations  to  consult  in  dress  or  conduct  the  tastes  of  her 
former,  and  quite  too  leisurely,  lover.  This  was  to  Wesley 
only  another  painful  surprise.  "  God,"  he  gravely  records 
in  his  Journal,  "  has  shown  me  yet  more  of  the  greatness 
of  my  deliverance  by  opening  to  me  a  new  and  unexpected 
scene  of  Miss  Sophie's  dissimulation."  Later,  Wesley  felt 
called  upon  to  mention  to  her  "  some  things  in  her  con- 
duct which  he  thought  reprehensible,"  and  was  much 
astonished — simple  man ! — at  finding  "  Miss  Sophie  "  re- 
senting with  shrill  vehemence  his  rebukes.  Her  husband 
was  kindled  by  his  wife's  anger,  and  forbade  her  to  speak 
to  Wesley,  or  to  attend  his  services ;  but  his  self-willed 
bride  seems  to  have  disobeyed  him.  Wesley  now  con- 
templated debarring  Mrs.  Williamson  from  the  Lord's 
Supper,  and  he  asked  Mr.  Causton,  the  magistrate,  "  Sir, 
what  if  I  should  think  it  the  duty  of  my  office  to  repel 
one  of  your  family  from  the  Holy  Communion  ? " 

"  If  you  repel  me  or  my  wife,"  answered  Mr.  Causton, 
"  I  shall  require  a  legal  reason ;  but  I  shall  trouble  myself 
about  none  else." 

In  those  days,  when  the  Lord's  Supper  was,  in  Cowper's 
phrase,  a  "pick-lock  of  office"  for  men,  and  a  sign  of 
social  respectability  for  women,  to  be  debarred  from  the 
table  of  the  Lord  was  a  serious  injury.  On  August  7 — 
five  months  after  her  marriage — Wesley  refused  to  allow 
Mrs.  Williamson  to  join  the  Lord's  Supper.  On  the  very 
next  day  a  warrant  was  issued  for  the  apprehension  of 
"  John  Wesley,  clerk,  to  answer  the  complaint  of  William 
Williamson  for  defaming  his  wife,  and  refusing  to  ad- 
minister to  her  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  in  a 
public  congregation  without  cause."  The  enraged  husband 
assessed  his  damages  at  .£1000. 

Wesley  was  arrested,  but  discharged  on  pledge  to 
appear  at  the  next  session  of  the  court.  He  was  asked 
to  put  in  writing  his  reasons  for  refusing  to  admit  Mrs. 
Williamson  to  the  Lord's  Supper ;  he  wrote  to  the  lady  : 
"If  you  offer  yourself  to  the  Lord's  table  on  Sunday,  I 
will  advertise  you,  as  I  have  done  more  than  once 
wherein  you  have  done  wrong,  and  when  you  have  openly 


110  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

declared  that  you  have  truly  repented,  I  will  administer 
to  you  the  mysteries  of  God."  But  Mrs.  Williamson  would 
not  formally  "  notify  the  curate  of  her  intention  to  present 
herself  at  the  communion";  till  she  did  so  Wesley  would 
not  "  advertise  her  wherein  she  had  done  wrong  " ;  and  so 
the  sad  nature  of  Mrs.  Williamson's  offence  remains  to  this 
day  unknown. 

Meanwhile,  a  grand  jury  of  forty-four  persons — about 
one-fifth  of  the  adult  male  population  of  the  town — con- 
sidered the  case.  There  were  twelve  charges  against 
Wesley,  ranging  from  one  of  "inverting  the  order  and 
method  of  the  liturgy,"  to  "  searching  into  and  meddling 
with  affairs  of  private  families."  A  majority  of  the  grand 
jury  found  ten  of  these  charges  proved ;  a  minority  of 
twelve  acquitted  Wesley,  and  declared  that  the  charges 
were  "an  artifice  of  Mr.  Causton's,  designed  to  blacken 
Mr.  Wesley's  character."  Wesley,  when  called  upon  to 
plead,  took  the  ground  that  nine  of  the  ten  charges  were 
of  an  ecclesiastical  nature,  as  to  which  the  court  had  no 
jurisdiction.  The  tenth,  that  of  speaking  and  writing 
to  Mrs.  Williamson,  was  of  a  secular  character,  and  he 
demanded  to  be  heard  upon  it  at  once. 

His  enemies,  however,  were  in  no  haste  to  bring  the 
issue  to  a  trial.  They  wished  to  use  the  charges  as  a  device 
for  driving  Wesley  from  the  colony.  The  military  chaplain 
at  Frederica  was  appointed  to  conduct  religious  services 
hi  Savannah,  and  Wesley's  office  was  thus  practically 
taken  from  him. 

The  weeks  crept  on ;  Wesley  found  that  he  could  neither 
secure  a  trial  nor  do  his  work  as  chaplain,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  sail  for  England.  He  posted  up  a  paper  in  the 
great  square,  with  the  announcement,  "Wnereas  John 
Wesley  designs  shortly  to  set  out  for  England,"  &c.  He 
was  notified  that  he  must  not  leave  the  settlement  till  he 
had  answered  the  charges  against  him.  Wesley  answered 
that  he  had  already  attended  seven  sessions  of  the  court 
for  that  purpose,  and  had  been  refused  the  opportunity  of 
pleading.  He  refused  to  sign  any  bond  pledging  himself 
to  appear  before  the  court,  and  an  order  was  published 
requiring  all  loyal  persons  to  prevent  him  leaving  the 
settlement.  He  was,  in  substance,  a  prisoner  at  large. 
Wesley's  enemies,  it  is  clear,  wished  not  only  to  drive 


A    STRANGE    MISSIONARY  111 

him  from  the  settlement,  but  to  make  his  departure  wear 
the  look  of  a  flight  from  justice. 

Wesley  conducted  evening  prayers  that  day ;  and  then, 
he  says,  "  about  8  o'clock,  the  tide  then  serving,  I  shook 
off  the  dust  from  my  feet  and  left  Georgia,  after  having 
preached  the  Gospel  there  not  as  I  ought,  but  as  I  was  able, 
one  year  and  nearly  nine  months."  A  troublesome  journey, 
parti v  by  boat,  and  partly  on  foot,  brought  Wesley  and 
his  three  companions  to  Charlestown,  and  ten  days  later, 
on  December  22,  he  set  sail  for  England.  A  strangely 
troubled  chapter  in  his  life  was  closed. 


CHAPTER  VII 

REACHING   THE    GOAL 

WESLEY  returned  from  America  a  visibly  defeated  man. 
His  ministry  had  failed ;  his  character  was  damaged ;  his 
future  was  dark.  He  was  not  exactly  a  fugitive  from  the 
law,  but  his  own  flock  had  used  the  law  to  drive  him  from 
their  shores.  He  would  land  in  England  hopelessly  dis- 
credited ;  and  as  he  meditated  during  the  long  eventless 
days  of  the  return  voyage,  Wesley  saw  all  this  in  clearest 
vision.  His  career  was  marred,  if  not  wrecked. 

But  Wesley  was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  dwell  on 
any  injury  to  his  reputation,  or  to  his  pocket,  or  to  his 
secular  career.  The  tragedy  of  the  situation,  he  felt,  lay 
in  the  fact  that  he  was  a  spiritual  failure.  His  religion, 
with  its  passionate  zeal,  its  heroic  intensity,  its  unsparing 
self-sacrifice,  yet  gave  neither  peace  to  his  own  heart  nor 
power  to  reach  the  hearts  of  others.  This  is  the  bitter 
analysis  of  his  own  spiritual  state  at  this  moment : — 

"Tuesday,  January  24,  1738. — I  have  a  fair  summer  religion. 
I  can  talk  well ;  nay,  and  believe  myself,  while  no  danger  is  near  : 
but  let  death  look  me  in  the  face,  and  my  spirit  is  troubled.  Nor 
can  I  say,  '  To  die  is  gain  ! ' 

'  I  have  a  sin  of  fear,  that  when  I've  spun 
My  last  thread  I  shall  perish  on  the  shore  ! ' 

"I  think,  verily,  if  the  Gospel  be  true,  I  am  safe;  for  I  not 
only  have  given,  and  do  give,  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor ;  I 
not  only  give  my  body  to  be  burned,  drowned,  or  whatever  God 
shall  appoint  for  me  ;  but  I  follow  after  charity  (though  not  as  I 
ought,  yet  as  I  can),  if  haply  I  may  attain  it.  I  now  believe  the 
Gospel  is  true.  '  I  show  my  faith  by  my  works,'  by  staking  my  all 
upon  it.  I  would  do  so  again  and  again  a  thousand  times,  if  the 
choice  were  still  to  make.  Whoever  sees  me,  sees  I  would  be  a 
Christian.  Therefore  '  are  my  ways  not  like  other  men's  ways.' 

112 


REACHING   THE   GOAL  113 

Therefore  I  have  been,  I  am  content  to  be,  'a  byword,  a  proverb 
of  reproach.'  But  in  a  storm  I  think,  '  What  if  the  Gospel  be  not 
true?'" 

This  is  a  bitter  record ;  it  makes  plain  the  shadow  under 
which  Wesley  was  living. 

Wesley  was  a  lonely  man,  too,  on  that  sad  voyage. 
Delamotte  was  left  behind  in  America;  Charles  Wesley 
and  Ingham  were  already  in  England.  Wesley  had  no 
companionship  but  his  own  bitter  thoughts,  and  his  mood 
of  depression  is  reflected  in  every  line  of  his  Journal.  He 
describes  himself  as  being  "sorrowful  and  very  heavy, 
though  I  could  give  no  particular  reason  for  it."  He 
notes  in  himself  "a  fearlulness  and  heaviness,"  which 
almost  continually  weighed  him  down.  There  is  a  touch 
of  keenest  pathos  in  the  sentences  he  writes  in  his  Journal. 
"  I  went  to  America  to  convert  the  Indians,  but,  oh,  who 
shall  convert  me?"  He  proceeds  to  deliberately  assess 
himself,  and  it  is  with  a  severity  of  self-judgment  little 
less  than  cruel.  His  words  must  be  quoted  in  full,  with 
the  significant  footnotes  in  brackets  and  in  italics,  which 
Wesley  himself  appended  in  later  years,  and  which 
represent  his  own  wiser  judgment  on  himself: — 

"  It  is  now  two  years  and  almost  four  months  since  I  left  my 
native  country,  in  order  to  teach  the  Georgian  Indians  the  nature 
of  Christianity ;  but  what  have  I  learned  myself  in  the  meantime  ? 
Why  (what  I  the  least  of  all  suspected),  that  I  who  went  to 
America  to  convert  others  was  never  myself  converted  to  God. 
[/  am  not  sure  of  this.]  '  I  am  not  mad,'  though  I  thus  speak ;  but, 
'  I  speak  the  words  of  truth  and  soberness  ' ;  if  haply  some  of  those 
who  still  dream  may  awake,  and  see,  that  as  I  am,  so  are  they. 

"Are  they  read  in  philosophy1?  So  was  I.  In  ancient  or 
modern  tongues  1  So  was  I  also.  Are  they  versed  in  the  science 
of  divinity?  I,  too,  have  studied  it  many  years.  Can  they  talk 
fluently  upon  spiritual  things?  The  very  same  could  I  do.  Are 
they  plenteous  in  alms?  Behold,  I  gave  all  my  goods  to  feed  the 
poor.  Do  they  give  of  their  labour  as  well  as  of  their  substance  ? 
I  have  laboured  more  abundantly  than  they  all.  Are  they  willing 
to  suffer  for  their  brethren?  I  have  thrown  up  my  friends, 
reputation,  ease,  country ;  I  have  put  my  life  in  my  hand,  wander- 
ing into  strange  lands ;  I  have  given  my  body  to  be  devoured  by 
the  deep,  parched  up  with  heat,  consumed  by  toil  and  weariness, 
or  whatsoever  God  should  please  to  bring  upon  me.  But  does  all 

H 


114  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

this  (be  it  more  or  less,  it  matters  not)  make  me  acceptable  to 
God  ?  Does  all  I  ever  did  or  can  know,  say,  give,  do,  or  suffer, 
justify  me  in  His  sight  ?  Yea,  or  the  constant  use  of  all  the  means 
of  grace  (which,  nevertheless,  is  meet,  right,  and  our  bounden 
duty)  ?  Or  that  I  know  nothing  of  myself ;  that  I  am  as  touching 
outward  moral  righteousness,  blameless  ?  Or,  to  come  closer  yet, 
the  having  a  rational  conviction  of  all  the  truths  of  Christianity  ? 
Does  all  this  give  me  a  claim  to  the  holy,  heavenly,  divine  character 
of  a  Christian  ?  By  no  means.  If  the  oracles  of  God  are  true ; 
if  we  are  still  to  abide  by  'the  law  and  the  testimony,'  all  these 
things,  though,  when  ennobled  by  faith  in  Christ  [/  had  even  then 
the  faith  of  a  servant,  though  not  that  of  a  scm],  they  are  holy  and 
just  and  good,  yet  without  it  are  '  dung  and  dross,'  meet  only  to 
be  purged  away  by  '  the  fire  that  never  shall  be  quenched.' 

"This,  then,  have  I  learned  in  the  ends  of  the  earth,  that  I 
'  am  fallen  short  of  the  glory  of  God ' ;  that  my  whole  heart  is 
'  altogether  corrupt  and  abominable ' ;  and,  consequently,  my  whole 
life  ;  seeing  it  cannot  be,  that  an  '  evil  tree '  should  '  bring  forth 
good  fruit ' :  that  '  alienated '  as  I  am  from  the  life  of  God,  I  am 
a  '  child  of  wrath '  [/  believe  not\,  an  heir  of  hell :  that  my  own 
works,  my  own  sufferings,  my  own  righteousness,  are  so  far  from 
reconciling  me  to  an  offended  God,  so  far  from  making  any 
atonement  for  the  least  of  those  sins,  which  '  are  more  in  number 
than  the  hairs  of  my  head,'  that  the  most  specious  of  them  need 
an  atonement  themselves,  or  they  cannot  abide  His  righteous 
judgment.  .  .  . 

"If  it  be  said  that  I  have  faith  (for  many  such  things  have  I 
heard,  from  many  miserable  comforters),  I  answer,  So  have  the 
devils — a  sort  of  faith ;  but  still  they  are  strangers  to  the  covenant 
of  promise.  So  the  Apostles  had  even  at  Cana  in  Galilee,  when 
Jesus  first  '  manifested  forth  His  glory ' ;  even  then  they,  in  a  sort, 
'  believed  on  Him ' ;  but  they  had  not  then  '  the  faith  that  over- 
cometh  the  world.'  The  faith  I  want  is  [the  faith  of  a  son],  '  A 
sure  trust  and  confidence  in  God,  that,  through  the  merits  of  Christ, 
my  sins  are  forgiven,  and  I  reconciled  to  the  favour  of  God.'  "* 

That,  even  allowing  for  the  qualifying  footnotes  of  a  later 
date,  is  a  bit  of  very  terrible  self-description.  Wesley,  it  is 
clear,  was  in  no  mood  to  write  soft  things  about  himself. 
Later,  we  may  discuss  whether  the  verdict  Wesley  passes 
on  himself  in  this  rnood  of  depressed  feeling  was  quite 
accurate;  meanwhile,  the  mood  itself  is  worth  noting. 
His  pride  is  gone.  The  sense  of  defeat  and  failure  is 
complete.  He  knows  there  is  something  in  Christianity 

1  Journal,  February  29,  1736. 


REACHING   THE   GOAL  115 

not  yet  attained.     His  mood  is  one  of  utter  self-abase- 
ment : — 

"All  my  works,  all  my  righteousness,  my  prayers,  need  an 
atonement  for  themselves ;  so  that  my  mouth  is  stopped.  I  have 
nothing  to  plead.  God  is  holy;  I  am  unholy.  God  is  a  con- 
suming fire  ;  I  am  altogether  a  sinner,  meet  to  be  consumed." 

The  Wesley  who  embarked  for  Georgia  in  1735  and  the 
Wesley  who  returned  to  England  in  1738  are  thus  wholly 
different  men.  Wesley  had  put  his  theology  once  more, 
as  at  Wroote,  to  the  test  of  actual  life,  and  it  had  failed. 
He  had  not  converted  the  Indians ;  he  had  only  learned 
that  he  was  not  converted  himself.  There  must  be  some 
fatal  flaw  in  his  creed  or  in  his  methods.  The  essential 
secret  of  Christianity — its  gift  of  peace  to  the  conscience, 
and  of  power  over  men — evaded  him.  Why  had  he  failed  ? 
What  was  it  turned  such  high  courage,  such  splendid 
devotion,  such  unsparing  self-denials,  to  mere  failure? 
Who  reads  the  secret  of  Wesley's  failure  has  got  to  the 
very  heart  of  Christianity. 

This  new  mood  had,  of  course,  its  gains.  For  one  thing, 
Wesley's  theology,  from  this  point,  passes  out  of  the 
pendulum  condition.  He  had  already,  as  we  have  seen, 
abandoned  mysticism ;  he  had  seen  its  deadly  nature. 
Ritualism,  too,  had  failed.  It  only  bred  strife.  His  own 
austere  legalism  left  the  spirit  unfed.  This  ascetic  found 
that  a  harried  body  did  not  ensure  a  soul  at  peace.  And 
from  this  point  conscience  and  intellect  in  Wesley  swung 
definitely  to  the  evangelical  reading  of  Christianity. 

All  this  was,  visibly,  a  stage  in  a  great  spiritual  process. 
Wesley  was  being  prepared  for  the  touch  of  another 
teacher,  and  for  the  entrance  into  his  life  of  a  new 
experience. 

As  Wesley  landed,  the  ship  in  which  Whitefield  was  about 
to  sail  for  America  lay  at  anchor  in  the  Downs.  Wesley 
had  looked  forward  to  the  inspiration  of  Whitefield's  com- 
radeship ;  and  he  grudged  sending  so  fine  a  spirit  to  the 
thankless  work  he  himself  had  abandoned  at  Savannah. 
He  promptly  sent  a  note  to  Whitefield  on  board  his  ship. 
"  When  I  saw  God  by  the  wind  which  was  carrying  you 
out  brought  me  in,"  he  wrote,  "  I  asked  counsel  ol  God. 
His  answer  you  have  enclosed." 


116  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

The  enclosure  was  a  slip  of  paper  with  the  sentence  on 
it,  "  Let  him  return  to  London."  Wesley  had  settled  the 
question  of  whether  Whitefield  should  go  or  stop  by 
sortilege,  with  this  result.  But  Whitefield  had  a  sortilege 
of  his  own,  and  the  sudden  emergence  in  his  memory  of 
the  story  of  the  prophet  that  turned  back  at  the  bidding 
of  another  prophet,  and  was  devoured  by  a  lion  in  con- 
sequence— as  told  in  the  Book  of  Kings — decided  him 
to  go  on  his  voyage;  and  Wesley,  at  the  most  critical 
moment  of  his  life,  was  thus  left  without  his  great 
comrade. 

Whitefield  was  just  then  in  the  dawn  of  his  amazing 
popularity  in  England.  He  was  little  more  than  a  lad, 
yet  crowds  hung  enchanted  on  the  music  of  his  lips.  And 
the  contrast  betwixt  Wesley  creeping  back  to  England  a 
spirit-broken  and  defeated  man,  and  Whitefield  sailing 
out  at  the  same  moment  with  a  nimbus  of  brilliant  popu- 
larity about  him,  is  little  less  than  dramatic. 

Wesley  landed  at  Deal  on  the  morning  of  February  i, 
and  immediately  proceeded  to  read  prayers  and  preach  in 
the  house  in  which  he  lodged.  Whatever  was  clouded  in 
his  spiritual  sky,  the  point  of  duty  always  shone  with  lumi- 
nous clearness.  Whether  his  own  spiritual  condition  was 
happy  or  unhappy,  he  must  try  to  mend  the  spiritual 
condition  of  others.  He  lived  in  the  spirit  of  the  words 
which  he  afterwards  made  part  of  the  Covenant  service 
read  every  year  in  all  the  Churches  he  founded,  "If  I 
die,  I  will  die  at  Thy  door.  If  I  sink,  I  will  sink  in  Thy 
ship!" 

He  went  straight  to  London,  where  he  had  to  give  an 
account  of  himself  to  the  trustees  of  the  settlement  in 
Georgia,  and  here  he  met  his  brother  Charles,  to  whom 
his  arrival  was  an  astonishment.  His  acquaintance  with 
the  Moravians  in  Savannah  naturally  made  him  turn  to 
Moravians  in  London,  and,  on  Tuesday,  February  7 — 
"a  day  much  to  be  remembered,"  as  he  says  in  his 
Journal — he  met  at  the  house  of  a  Dutch  merchant  Peter 
Bohler,  a  man  destined  to  profoundly  influence  his  life. 

Bohler  had  been  educated  at  Jena  University,  and  had 
joined  the  Moravians  while  yet  a  lad.  He  had  been 
ordained  as  a  Moravian  missionary  by  Count  Zinzendorf, 
and  was  on  his  way  to  Carolina  when  Wesley  met  him 


.;     REACHING   THE   GOAL  117 

He  was  just  then  delivering  addresses,  through  an  inter- 
preter, to  little  audiences  in  London,  and  some  strange 
spiritual  influence  accompanied  his  words. 

Wesley  and  Bohler  recognised  each  other,  almost  at 
the  moment  they  met,  as  kindred  spirits.  The  Moravian 
described  Wesley  to  Count  Zinzendorf  as  "a  man  of 
good  principles,  who  knew  he  did  not  properly  believe  on 
the  Saviour,  and  was  willing  to  be  taught."  Of  Charles 
Wesley  he  says,  "  He  is  at  present  very  much  distressed 
in  his  mind,  but  does  not  know  how  he  shall  begin  to 
be  acquainted  with  the  Saviour.  Our  mode  of  believing 
in  the  Saviour  seems  so  easy  to  Englishmen,  that  they 
cannot  reconcile  themselves  to  it.  If  it  were  a  little  more 
difficult,  they  would  much  sooner  find  their  way  into  it. 
They  take  it  for  granted,"  said  this  shrewd  but  simple- 
hearted  Moravian,  "  that  they  believe  already,  and  try  to 
prove  their  faith  by  their  works,  and  thus  so  torment 
themselves  that  they  are  at  heart  very  miserable.'" 

Wesley  went  with  Bohler  to  Oxford,  and  listened 
eagerly  to  the  teaching  of  his  new  friend.  He  guessed 
dimly  that  here,  at  last,  lay  the  secret  which  had  evaded 
him  so  long.  And  yet  the  simple  speech  of  the  Moravian 
sounded,  in  Wesley's  ears,  like  the  accents  of  an  unknown 
tongue.  "I  understood  him  not,"  he  said,  "and  least  of 
all  when  he  said,  'Mi  frater,  mi  frater;  excoquenda  est 
ista  tua  philosophia.' "  What  had  Wesley's  "  philosophy  " 
done  that  it  was  necessary  to  jettison  it ! 

But  Wesley  was  teachable,  and  on  March  4  he  records 
that  he  spent  a  day  with  Peter  Bohler,  "  by  whom,  in  the 
hands  of  the  great  God,  I  was,  on  Sunday,  the  5th,  clearly 
convinced  of  unbelief ;  of  the  want  of  that  faith  whereby 
alone  we  are  saved."  Later,  Wesley  says,  "  Bohler  amazed 
me  more  and  more  by  the  account  he  gave  of  fruits  of 
faith,  the  love,  holiness,  and  happiness  that  he  affirmed  to 
attend  it."  Wesley  frankly  accepted  this  teaching.  True 
faith  must  produce  these  fruits.  But  Wesley  was  first  and 
last  a  logician,  and  he  asks  himself,  "  How  can  I  preach  to 
others  wno  have  not  faith  myself  ? "  Bohler's  advice  was 
direct  and  practical, "  Preach  faith  till  you  have  it,"  he  said, 
"  and  then  because  you  have  it  you  will  preach  faith." 

Coleridge  burlesques  this  by  saying  tnat  it  amounts  to 
"  Tell  a  lie  long  enough  and  often  enough,  and  you'll  be 


118  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

sure  to  end  by  believing  it."  But  then  Coleridge  fails 
completely  to  understand  the  sense  of  Bohler's  advice! 
Wesley  himself  was  in  no  mood  to  cavil.  ':  On  the  very 
next  day,  Monday,  6th,"  he  records,  "  I  began  preaching 
this  new  doctrine,  though  my  soul  started  back  from  the 
work.  The  first  person  to  whom  I  offered  salvation  by 
faith  alone  was  a  prisoner  under  sentence  of  death,"  and 
Wesley  confesses  that  he  found  the  task,  in  this  particu- 
lar shape,  the  more  difficult,  "  as  I  had  been  many  years 
a  zealous  asserter  of  the  impossibility  of  a  death-bed 
repentance."  The  condemned  man  promptly  confuted 
Wesley's  doubts  by  accepting  the  new  doctrine,  and,  in  the 
divine  strength  bred  of  it,  showing  "a  composed  cheer- 
fulness" and  "a  serene  peace,"  while  he  stood  on  the 
very  scaffold. 

Wesley  was  convinced  that  Bohler's  teaching  as  to 
faith  and  its  fruits  was  Scriptural ;  nay,  it  was  the  doctrine 
of  the  Church  of  England  itself.  But  a  doubt  yet  re- 
mained. How  could  the  great  spiritual  process  by  which 
a  man  passed  from  death  unto  life  be  an  instantaneous 
work?  Yet,  on  examination,  Wesley  found  that  almost 
every  conversion  recorded  in  the  New  Testament  was  an 
instantaneous  work.  It  might  well  be,  however,  that 
what  was  common  in  the  first  century  had  become  im- 
possible in  the  eighteenth  century.  But,  "on  Sunday 
the  22nd,"  records  Wesley,  "  I  was  beat  out  of  this  retreat, 
too,  by  the  concurring  evidence  of  several  living  witnesses, 
who  testified  God  had  thus  wrought  in  themselves,  giving 
them,  in  a  moment,  such  a  faith  in  the  blood  of  His  Son 
as  translated  them  out  of  darkness  into  light,  out  of  sin 
and  fear  into  holiness  and  happiness.  Here,"  writes 
Wesley,  "  ended  my  disputing.  I  could  now  only  cry  out, 
'  Lord,  help  Thou  my  unbelief ! ' " 

During  all  these  days  of  stress  and  search,  of  doubt  and 
of  yearning,  Wesley's  zeal  in  practical  work  never  relaxed. 
It  grew  even  more  urgent.  Whatever  his  own  spiritual 
fortunes,  he  must  warn  others  of  their  perils  and  of  their 
duties.  To  every  one — man  or  woman,  rich  or  poor,  with 
whom  he  was  for  a  moment  in  company — he  would  speak 
some  word  for  his  Master.  The  passing  traveller  on  the 
road,  the  ostler  who  took  the  bridle  of  his  horse,  the 
servant  of  the  house,  the  chance  guest  at  the  table — 


REACHING   THE    GOAL  119 

to  each,  in  turn,  Wesley  uttered  some  brief,  solemn, 
unpreluded  word  of  counsel  and  always  with  strange 
effect. 

At  one  inn,  Wesley  and  his  companion  were  served  by 
a  gay  young  woman,  who  at  first  listened  to  them  with 
utter  indifference.  When  they  went  away,  however,  "  she 
fixed  her  eyes,  and  neither  moved  nor  said  one  word,  but 
appeared  as  much  astonished  as  if  she  had  seen  one  risen 
from  the  dead."  And  there  must  have  been  something  to 
compel  astonishment,  and  even  to  startle,  in  these  sudden 
and  unconventional  challenges  of  Wesley.  His  appearance 
— the  thin,  clear,  intense  face,  the  level,  steady  eyes,  the 
dress  of  the  clergyman,  the  brow  of  the  scholar,  the  accent 
of  the  gentleman — all  these  gave  startling  power  to  the 
unprefaced  and  sudden  appeal,  that  seemed  to  break  out 
of  eternity,  and  to  have  something  of  the  awe  of  eternity 
about  it. 

Charles  Wesley  had  already  found  the  spiritual  de- 
liverance he  sought.  He  was  just  recovering  from 
pleurisy ;  and  when  the  new-born  joy  broke  into  his  soul, 
Wesley  records,  "  his  bodily  strength  returned,  also,  from 
that  hour."  Coleridge  regards  this  as  an  inversion  of 
cause  and  effect.  All  that  had  happened,  he  thinks,  was 
that  the  pleurisy  was  gone ;  and  Charles  Wesley  mistook 
the  improvement  of  his  health  for  a  spiritual  change.  In 
the  misinterpreted  physical  ferment  of  that  vanished 
pleurisy,  Charles  Wesley,  according  to  Coleridge,  somehow 
lived  to  the  end  of  his  days !  So  simply  can  a  great 
philosopher  explain  away  spiritual  phenomena! 

The  conversion  of  Charles  Wesley  was  marked  by  a 
curious  incident.  He  was  lying  ill,  sad,  and  burdened; 
trembling  at  the  point  of  a  faith  he  was  yet  unable  to 
exercise.  A  devout  woman  in  the  house,  who  assisted  in 
nursing  him,  was  seized  with  the  conviction  that  she 
ought  to  speak  some  words  of  comfort  to  him.  But  he 
was  a  clergyman,  and  she  only  a  servant.  How  could  she 
venture  on  such  an  impertinence  ? 

She  took  Mr.  Bray,  in  whose  house  Charles  Wesley  was 
lying,  aside,  and  with  a  burst  of  tears  told  him  of  the 
impulse  which  pressed  with  overpowering  energy  upon 
her,  and  asked  how  could  she,  a  poor,  weak,  sintul 
creature,  undertake  to  guide  a  minister  ? 


120  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

"Go,  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,"  said  Mr.  Bray;  '-speak 
your  words.  Christ  will  work" 

The  pair  knelt  down  and  prayed  together ;  but  after 
they  had  parted,  the  trembling  woman  knelt  down  by 
herself,  and  prayed  afresh.  Then,  walking  with  timid 
feet  to  the  door  of  the  room  where  Charles  Wesley  was 
lying,  she  said,  softly,  but  clearly,  "  In  the  name  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  arise !  Thou  shalt  be  healed  of  all  thy 
infirmities ! " 

Wesley,  according  to  his  own  version,  was  compos- 
ing himself  to  sleep  when  these  words,  coming  from 
unseen  lips,  fell  on  his  ears.  "  They  struck  me,"  he  says, 
"to  the  heart.  I  never  heard  words  uttered  with  like 
solemnity.  I  sighed,  and  said  within  myself,  '  Oh  that 
Christ  would  thus  speak  to  me ! '  I  lay  musing  and 
trembling." 

He  made  inquiries,  and  presently  the  poor  maid  said, 
"It  was  I,  a  weak,  sinful  creature,  that  spoke.  But  the 
words  were  Christ's.  He  commanded  me  to  say  them, 
and  so  constrained  me  that  I  could  not  forbear."  And 
those  words,  spoken  by  the  lips  of  an  ignorant  woman, 
and  under  that  mysterious  impulse,  brought  spiritual 
deliverance  to  Charles  Wesley  ! 

Meanwhile  Wesley  was  beginning  to  reflect  how  ill  his 
teachers  had  served  him.  He  had  sat  at  the  feet  of 
a  Kempis,  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  of  William  Law.  He 
had  been  the  most  docile  of  scholars;  he  had  followed 
their  counsels  at  all  costs;  and  they  had  left  him  bank- 
rupt !  A  Kempis  and  Taylor  were  beyond  his  reach,  but 
William  Law  still  lived.  He  was  the  teacher,  indeed,  of 
thousands;  and  Wesley  turned  upon  him  with  a  sort  of 
fierce  challenge,  kindled  by  the  sense  of  wasted  years,  and 
the  memory  of  needless  sufferings.  For  two  years,  he 
wrote  to  Law,  he  had  lived  by  his  theology;  he  had  taught 
it  to  others.  It  had  been  to  Wesley  himself  a  hateful 
yoke,  and  to  those  to  whom  Wesley  preached  an  idle 
sound.  Wesley,  by  God's  mercy,  had  found,  at  last,  a 
wiser  teacher,  who  .had  taught  him  the  true  secret  of 
Christianity,  "  Believe,  and  thou  shalt  be  saved !  Believe 
in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  with  all  thy  heart,  and  nothing 
shall  be  impossible  to  thee;  strip  thyself  naked  of  thine 
own  works  and  righteousness,  and  flee  to  Him." 


REACHING    THE    GOAL  121 

In  that  teaching  Wesley  saw  the  promise  of  the  fulfil- 
ment of  all  his  needs : — 

" '  Now,  sir,'  he  cries  to  Law,  '  suffer  me  to  ask,  How  will  you 
answer  it  to  our  common  Lord  that  you  never  gave  me  this  advice  1 
Why  did  I  scarcely  ever  hear  you  name  the  name  of  Christ ;  never 
so  as  to  ground  anything  upon  faith  in  His  blood  ?  If  you  say 
you  advised  other  things  as  preparatory  to  this,  what  is  this  but 
laying  a  foundation  below  the  foundation  ?  Is  not  Christ,  then, 
the  First  as  well  as  the  Last  1  If  you  say  you  advised  them  be- 
cause you  knew  that  I  had  faith  already,  verily  you  knew  nothing 
of  me ;  you  discerned  not  my  spirit  at  all.'  " 

Wesley  goes  on  to  say,  "  I  beseech  you,  sir,  by  the  mercies  of 
God,  to  consider  deeply  and  impartially  whether  the  true  reason 
of  your  never  pressing  this  upon  me  was  not  this,  that  you  never 
had  it  yourself." 

Never,  perhaps,  was  a  great  teacher  so  suddenly  ar- 
raigned by  his  own  pupil !  Law,  in  reply,  reminds  Wesley, 
that  he  had  other  teachers,  whom  he  might,  on  the  same 
grounds,  arraign.  "  Did  you  not  above  two  years  ago,"  he 
says,  "  give  a  new  translation  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  ?  Will 
you  call  Thomas  to  account,  and  to  answer  it  to  God  as 
you  did  me  for  not  teaching  you  that  doctrine  ? " 

But  Law  goes  on  to  say  he  did  teach  Wesley  exactly 
what  Bohler  taught  him.  "  You  have  had  a  great  many 
conversations  with  me,  and  I  dare  say  that  you  never  was 
with  me  for  half-an-hour  without  my  being  large  upon 
that  very  doctrine,  which  you  make  me  totally  silent  and 
ignorant  of."  Law  was  a  controversialist  as  formidable 
as  Wesley  himself,  and  he  ended  his  letter  by  a  very 
keen  thrust : — 

"  If  you  had  only  this  faith  till  some  weeks  ago,  let  me  advise 
you  not  to  be  too  hasty  in  believing,  that  because  you  have 
changed  your  language  or  expressions,  you  have  changed  your 
faith.  The  head  can  as  easily  amuse  itself  with  a  living  and 
justifying  faith  in  the  blood  of  Jesus,  as  with  any  other  notion ; 
and  the  heart,  which  you  suppose  to  be  a  place  of  security,  as 
being  the  seat  of  self-love,  is  more  deceitful  than  the  head." 

It  is  easy  to  understand  Wesley's  sudden  fierceness  with 
Law,  and  yet  to  sympathise  with  Law's  defence.  Law 
had  completely  failed ;  his  teaching  cost  Wesley  years  of 


122  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

wasted  suffering ;  yet  the  fault  did  not  lie  wholly  in  the 
teacher.  It  is  true  that  in  Law's  books,  and,  no  doubt,  in 
his  personal  talks  with  Wesley,  could  be  found  frequent 
and  full  expositions  of  the  evangelical  way  of  salvation. 
But  the  emphasis  lay  elsewhere.  There  was  no  true  per- 
spective in  Law's  theology.  Nor  was  Wesley,  in  that 
softened  mood,  bred  of  the  consciousness  of  utter  failure, 
in  which  Bohler  found  him,  and  which  explains  why 
Bohler's  teaching  proved  so  instantly  effective.  The  secret 
of  Law's  failure  as  a  teacher,  in  a  word,  lies  largely  in  the 
spiritual  condition  of  his  pupil. 

But  Wesley  was  standing  on  the  verge  of  a  new  life. 
Wednesday,  May  24,  1738,  was  for  him  the  great  day 
of  deliverance,  and  he  has  described  it  in  words  that 
have  become  historic.  For  days  he  had  been  seeking  peace, 
as  Bohler  had  taught  him,  "(i)  by  absolutely  renouncing 
all  dependence,  in  whole  or  in  part,  upon  my  own  works 
or  righteousness,  on  which  I  had  really  grounded  my 
hope  of  salvation,  though  I  knew  it  not  from  my  youth 
up :  (2)  by  adding  to  the  constant  use  of  all  the  other 
means  of  grace  continued  prayer  for  this  very  thing — 
justifying,  saving  faith ;  a  fuller  reliance  on  the  blood 
of  Christ  shed  for  me ;  a  trust  in  Him  as  my  sole  justi- 
fication, sanctification,  and  redemption."  There  still,  how- 
ever, lay  on  him  "  a  strange  indifference,  dulness,  and 
coldness,  and  a  constant  sense  of  failure."  But  the  dawn 
of  a  new  and  great  experience  was  near 

All  through  the  memorable  day  of  his  conversion  it  is 
curious  to  note  how  Wesley  was  eagerly  listening  as  if  for 
some  voice  calling  to  him  out  of  the  eternal  world.  He 
seemed  to  catch,  everywhere,  prophetic  echoes  of  some 
coming  message.  The  very  air  was  full  of  whispers  and 
omens.  When  he  opened  his  New  Testament  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  he  tells  how  his  eyes  fell  on  the 
words,  "There  are  given  unto  us  exceeding  great  and 
precious  promises  that  we  should  be  partakers  of  the 
divine  nature."  Just  before  he  left  his  room  Wesley 
opened  the  book  again,  and,  as  with  the  force  of  a  personal 
message,  there  gleamed  on  him  from  the  open  page  the 
sentence,  "  Thou  art  not  far  from  the  kingdom  of  God." 
These  strange  whispers  met  him  and  pursued  him  every- 
where. In  the  anthem  in  St.  Paul's  he  heard  trans- 


REACHING   THE    GOAL  123 

lated  into  stormy  music  the  cry  of  his  own  heart,  "  Out 
of  the  deep  have  I  called  unto  Thee,  0  Lord.  Lord, 
hear  my  voice ;  let  Thine  ears  consider  well  the  voice  of 
my  complaint."  Then,  through  the  chant  of  the  sweet- 
voiced  choir,  the  thunder  of  the  organ,  ran,  like  a  thread 
of  still  diviner  music,  a  personal  message,  a  voice  whisper- 
ing to  him  in  reply  :  "  O  Israel,  trust  in  the  Lord,  for  with 
the  Lord  there  is  mercy,  and  with  Him  is  plenteous  re- 
demption, and  He  shall  redeem  Israel  from  all  his  sins ! " 
"  In  the  evening,"  he  says,  "  I  went  very  unwillingly  to 
the  society  in  Aldersgate  Street,  where  one  was  reading 
Luther's  preface  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,"  and  across 
more  than  two  centuries  the  great  German  spoke  to  the 
great  Englishman. 

What  followed  must  be  told  in  Wesley's  own  words. 

"About  a  quarter  before  nine,  while  he  was  describing  the 
change  which  God  works  in  the  heart  through  faith  in  Christ, 
I  felt  my  heart  strangely  warmed.  I  felt  I  did  trust  in  Christ, 
Christ  alone,  for  salvation ;  and  an  assurance  was  given  me  that 
He  had  taken  away  my  sins,  even  mine,  and  saved  me  from  the 
law  of  sin  and  death.  I  began  to  pray  with  all  my  might  for 
those  who  had  in  a  more  especial  manner  despitefully  used  me  and 
persecuted  me.  I  then  testified  openly  to  all  there  what  I  now  first 
felt  in  my  heart.  But  it  was  not  long  before  the  enemy  suggested, 
'  This  cannot  be  faith ;  for  where  is  thy  joy  ? '  Then  was  I  taught 
that  peace  and  victory  over  sin  are  essential  to  faith  in  the  Captain 
of  our  salvation  ;  but  that,  as  to  the  transports  of  joy  that  usually 
attend  the  beginning  of  it,  especially  in  those  who  have  mourned 
deeply,  God  sometimes  giveth,  sometimes  withholdeth,  them  ac- 
cording to  the  counsels  of  His  own*  will." l 

The  fluctuations  in  Wesley's  gladness  during  those  first 
moments  of  deliverance  really  prove  Wesley's  kinship 
with  all  believing  hearts  in  every  age.  Human  nature  is 
hardly  capable  of  one  sustained,  unshadowed,  perpetual 
joy.  But  bouthey  fastens  on  this  very  feature  in  Wesley's 
experience  and  extracts  from  it  an  argument  against  its 
genuineness.  "  Here,"  he  says,  "  is  a  plain  contradiction  in 
terms;  an  assurance  which  did  not  assure  him."  Cole- 
ridge, as  happens  with  amusing  frequency,  disagrees  with 
both  Southey  and  Wesley. 

1  Journal,  Mav  24,  1738. 


124  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

" '  This  assurance,'  he  says,  '  amounted  to  little  more  than  a 
strong  pulse  or  throb  of  sensibility,  accompanying  the  vehement 
volition  of  acquiescence,  an  ardent  desire  to  find  the  position  true 
and  a  concurring  determination  to  receive  it  as  truth.  That  the 
change  took  place  in  a  society  of  persons  all  highly  excited  aids 
and  confirms  me  in  this  explanation.' " 

Coleridge,  it  will  be  seen,  invents  his  facts.  There  was 
no  "  excitement "  in  the  little  company  in  which  a  single 
voice  was  audible,  reading  nothing  more  exciting  than 
a  bit  of  exposition  translated  from  the  German.  But 
though  Coleridge  distrusts  Wesley  he  contradicts  Southey. 
"  Surely,"  he  says,  "  it  is  rendering  the  word  '  assurance ' 
too  absolutely  to  affirm  its  incompatibility  with  any  in- 
trusive suggestion  of  the  memory  or  the  fancy."  There 
is  a  flash  of  real  insight  in  those  words ! 

Charles  Wesley-  was  not  present  in  that  little  room  at 
Al^ersgate  at  the  supreme  moment  of  his  brother's  life. 
He  was  lying  at  home  sick,  and  was  engaged  in  prayer. 
The  first  impulse  of  John  Wesley  and  those  about  him 
was  to  carry  the  news  to  the  younger  brother.  "  Towards 
ten,"  writes  Charles  Wesley,  "  my  brother  was  brought  in 
triumph  by  a  troop  of  our  friends,  and  declared,  '  I  believe.' 
We  sang  a  hymn  with  great  joy  and  parted  with  prayer." 
The  hymn  is  supposed  to  be  that  beginning  with  the 

verse : — 
./- 

s     "  Where  shall  my  wondering  soul  begin  : 

How  shall  I  all  to  heaven  aspire  ? 
A  slave  redeemed  from  death  and  sin, 

A  brand  plucked  from  eternal  fire. 
How  shall  I  equal  triumphs  raise, 
Or  sing  my  great  Deliverer's  praise  ? " 

Charles  Wesley  had  just  composed  that  fine  hymn  in 
the  glow  of  his  own  conversion,  and  it  was  published  a 
few  months  later.  Its  music  runs  through  the  whole 
history  of  Methodism;  the  experience  it  reflects  is 
repeated  wherever  a  human  soul  with  intelligent  faith 
receives  Christ. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  historic  relations  of  Wesley's 
conversion.  The  two  Reformations — of  Germany  and 
of  England — touch  here.  They  touched,  indeed,  at  an 
earlier  stage.  Who  traces  the  great  spiritual  movement 


REACHmG   THE   GOAL  125 

under  Luther,  which  transfigured  Germany  and  created 
Protestantism,  must  go  back  beyond  Luther  to  another 
Lincolnshire  parsonage  —  to  Lutterworth,  where  John 
Wycliffe  translated  the  Bible  into  English,  and  was  the 
centre  of  the  spiritual  movement  which  during  the 
fourteenth  century  swept  over  England.  The  English 
reformer  influenced  Germany  almost  as  much  as  he  in- 
fluenced his  native  land.  John  Huss  himself  made  no 
secret  of  the  debt  he  owed  to  Wyclifie,  and  the  Council  of 
Constance,  which  burnt  the  body  of  John  Huss,  directed 
Wycliife's  bones  to  be  also  burnt.  Englishman  and 
Bohemian,  in  its  judgment,  represented  twin  forces,  and 
must  be  smitten  with  like  penalties.  The  Moravian 
Brethren  come,  through  the  stormy  generations  which 
followed,  by  direct  spiritual  descent  from  Huss;  Luther 
was  his  spiritual  heir.  And  so,  after  more  than  three 
hundred  years,  Wycliff'e's  teaching  came  back  to  England 
in  Bohler ;  it  spoke  to  Wesley  from  Luther's  lips  in  the 
little  gathering  in  Aldersgate  Street.  Great  debts  are,  in 
this  way,  sometimes  greatly  paid. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WHAT    HAD    HAPPENED 

THE  question  may  now  be  asked,  What  was  it  really 
happened  in  that  little  room  in  Aldersgate  Street  on  the 
night  of  May  24,  1738?  Something  did  happen:  some- 
thing memorable,  something  enduring.  It  changed 
Wesley's  life.  It  lifted  him,  at  a  breath,  out  of  doubt 
into  certainty.  It  transfigured  weakness  into  power. 
Nay,  it  did  something  more;  it  changed  the  course  of 
history !  A  purely  secular  witness  like  Lecky  declares 
the  movement  which  had  its  starting-point  in  that  little 
room  on  that  night  is  historically  of  greater  importance 
than  all  the  splendid  victories  by  land  or  sea  won  under 
Pitt.  But  for  it  there  would  be  no  Meihodist  Church 
under  any  sky,  and  English-speaking  Protestantism  itself, 
if  it  still  survived — or  if  it  had  not  found  another  Wesley 
— would  be  bankrupt  of  spiritual  force. 

Now,  science  requires  for  such  an  effect  an  adequate 
cause;  and  some  of  the  causes  assigned,  though  they 
bear  the  authority  of  famous  names,  are  of  quite  humorous 
inadequacy.  Coleridge,  as  we  have  seen,  discovers  in 
Charles  Wesley's  conversion  nothing  more  than  a  re- 
covery from  pleurisy.  It  represented  a  fall  of  tem- 
perature in  his  blood,  not  the  entrance  of  new  spiritual 
forces  into  his  character.  Southey  is  disposed  in  the 
same  way  to  resolve  Wesley's  spiritual  experiences  into 
physical  terms.  He  traces  the  emotions  of  that  great 
hour  on  the  night  of  May  24  to  the  state  of  his  pulse 
or  of  his  stomach.  But  to  make  John  Wesley's  stomach, 
and  not  his  soul,  the  scene  of  such  wonderful  phenomena, 
the  source  whence  radiate  such  far-reaching  forces,  can 
only  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  surprising  feats  of 
unconscious  humour  on  record.  The  "  explanations "  of 
Coleridge  and  Southey  explain  nothing ;  they  simply 
reflect  that  obstinate  reluctance  to  admit  the  existence 

126 


WHAT   HAD   HAPPENED  127 

and  validity  of  spiritual  forces  which  is  the  last  disguise 
of  unbelief. 

Wesley's  own  explanation  is  that  in  that  little  meeting, 
and  at  that  hour  so  precisely  fixed,  he  was  "  converted." 
And  he  probably  understood  what  happened  a  little  better 
than  his  as  yet  unborn  critics. 

But  to  this  view  many  persons  object  that  Wesley  was 
really  converted  long  before  that  night.  If  John  Wesley 
was  not  a  Christian  when  toiling  on  his  spiritual  treadmill 
at  Oxford  and  in  Georgia,  then,  cries  Canon  Overton,  "  God 
help  all  those  who  profess  and  call  themselves  Christians ! " 
And  multitudes,  no  doubt,  will  join  in  emphatic — and, 
indeed,  in  somewhat  alarmed — agreement  with  Canon 
Overton.  Let  that  great  experience  be  recalled  which 
came  to  Wesley  after  reading  Bishop  Taylor's  "  Holy 
Living."  "  Instantly,"  he  says,  "  I  resolved  to  dedicate 
all  my  life  to  God,  all  my  thoughts  and  words  and  actions, 
being  thoroughly  convinced  that  there  was  no  medium, 
but  that  every  part  of  my  life,  not  some  part  only,  must 
either  be  a  sacrifice  to  God  or  myself,  that  is  the  devil." 
Was  not  that  the  true  turning-point  of  Wesley's  life  ? 

Jeremy  Taylor's  teaching  certainly  acted  as  a  pre- 
cipitating shock  to  all  the  longings  and  convictions  of 
Wesley's  spiritual  nature.  They  crystallised  at  its  touch 
into  an  unshakable  purpose.  He  did  at  that  moment 
surrender  to  the  great  forces  and  accept  the  great  duties 
of  religion.  And  he  did  this  with  a  decision  and  com- 
pleteness rare  in  human  experience.  "Instantly,"  he 
says,  "  I  resolved  ! "  To  Wesley,  no  half  measures,  no  easy 
compromises,  were  at  any  time  possible.  Even  though 
his  reading  of  truth  was  sadly  mistaken,  his  loyalty  to 
it  was  of  heroic  fibre.  Religion  for  him  was  no  pleasant 
anodyne,  a  premium  paid  to  secure  eternal  safety,  a 
decorous  fringe  to  the  outer  garment  of  his  life.  It  was 
the  chief  business  of  existence.  There  was  in  Wesley's 
religion,  too,  at  every  stage,  the  essential  note  of  passion. 
He  would  follow  the  truth  as  he  saw  it  at  all  risks  and 
through  all  worlds. 

Was  this  not  a  conversion  ?  Did  it  not  bring  him  into 
the  household  of  God's  children  ?  Here  was  certainly  that 
root  of  all  religion,  the  submitted  will.  Why,  following 
this  rhythm  betwixt  the  human  soul  and  God,  did  there 


128  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

not  come,  in  Wesley's  case,  that  eternal  music  of  peace, 
hushing  all  discords,  which  is  its  product  ?  If  he  had 
died  then,  would  he  not  have  been  saved  ? 

As  to  this  Wesley  himself  doubted.  He  offers  con- 
flicting judgments.  "  I,  who  went  to  America  to  convert 
others,"  he  says,  "was  never  myself  converted  to  God." 
But,  later,  with  a  wise  doubt,  he  writes :  "  I  am  not  sure 
of  this."  Later  still,  and  with  clearer  insight,  he  wrote 
of  himself  as  having  at  that  time  "  the  faith  of  a  servant, 
not  of  a  son." 

The  truth  is,  Wesley  simply  did  not  understand  at  that 
stage  the  Christianity  in  which  he  had  been  nurtured 
and  of  which  he  was  a  teacher.  He  had  sat  at  the  feet  of 
many  instructors  and  had  read  many  books.  He  had  been 
a  sacerdotalist,  an  ascetic,  a  mystic,  a  legalist,  all  in  turns 
— nay,  all  together !  And  yet,  through  all  these  stages, 
he  had  persistently  misread  the  true  order  of  the  spiritual 
world.  He  believed  that  a  changed  life  was  not  the  fruit 
of  forgiveness,  but  its  cause.  Good  works,  he  held,  came 
before  forgiveness  and  constituted  the  title  to  it ;  they 
did  not  come  after  it  and  represent  its  effects.  He  had, 
in  every  mood  of  his  soul,  that  is,  missed  the  great  secret 
of  Christianity,  lying  so  near,  and  level  to  the  intelligence 
of  a  child ;  the  secret  of  a  personal  salvation,  the  free  gift 
of  God's  infinite  love  through  Christ ;  a  salvation  received 
through  Christ  and  by  faith ;  a  salvation  attested  by  the 
Spirit  of  God  and  verified  in  the  consciousness. 

Wesley  himself  supplies  the  evidence  that  up  to  this 
time  he  had  missed  this  conception  of  religion.  We  have 
his  spiritual  chronology  drawn  out  by  his  own  hand,  in  a 
series  of  self-judgments,  all  dated  and  catalogued,  and 
making  a  complete  map  of  his  religious  experience.1  He 
gives  this  by  way  of  preface  to  his  own  account  of  what 
took  place  at  the  room  in  Aldersgate  Street,  and  he  explains 
what,  at  each  successive  stage,  had  been  the  foundation  of 
his  religion.  We  may  quote  these,  prefixing  to  each  mood 
the  stage  in  Wesley's  life  to  which  it  belonged  :— 

THE  CHILD. — "  I  was  carefully  taught  that  I  could  only  be  saved 
by  universal  obedience;  by  keeping  all  the  commandments  of 
God ;  in  the  meaning  of  which  I  was  diligently  instructed.  And 

1  Journal,  May  24,  1738. 


WHAT    HAD   HAPPENED  129 

those  instructions,  so  far  as  they  respected  outward  duties  and  sins,  I 
gladly  received  and  often  thought  of.  But  all  that  was  said  to  me  of 
inward  obedience,  or  holiness,  I  neither  understood  nor  remembered. 
So  that  I  was  indeed  as  ignorant  of  the  true  meaning  of  the  law  as 
I  was  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ. 

THE  SCHOOLBOY. — "  The  next  six  or  seven  years  were  spent  at 
school ;  where,  outward  restraints  being  removed,  I  was  much 
more  negligent  than  before.  .  .  .  However,  I  still  read  the 
Scriptures,  and  said  my  prayers  morning  and  evening.  And  what 
I  now  hoped  to  be  saved  by  was :  ( I )  Not  being  so  bad  as  other 
people;  (2)  having  still  a  kindness  for  religion;  (3)  reading  the 
Bible,  going  to  church,  and  saying  my  prayers. 

THE  UNIVERSITY  STUDENT. — "  Being  removed  to  the  university 
for  five  years,  I  still  said  my  prayers  both  in  public  and  private. 
...  I  cannot  well  tell  what  I  hoped  to  be  saved  by  now,  when 
I  was  continually  sinning  against  that  little  light  I  had,  unless 
by  those  transient  fits  of  what  many  divines  taught  me  to  call 
repentance. 

HOLY  ORDERS. — "  I  began  to  alter  the  whole  form  of  my  conversa- 
tion. .  .  .  I  set  apart  an  hour  or  two  a  day  for  religious  retirement. 
I  communicated  every  week.  I  watched  against  all  sin,  whether  in 
word  or  deed.  I  began  to  aim  at  and  pray  for  inward  holiness.  So 
that  now  doing  so  much,  and  living  so  good  a  life,  I  doubted  not  but 
I  was  a  good  Christian. 

THE  DISCIPLINE  OF  WILLIAM  LAW. — "Meeting  now  with  Mr. 
Law's  '  Christian  Perfection '  and  '  Serious  Call,'  although  I  was 
much  offended  at  many  parts  of  both,  yet  they  convinced  me  more 
than  ever  of  the  exceeding  height,  breadth,  and  depth  of  the  law  of 
God.  ...  I  cried  to  God  for  help  and  resolved  not  to  prolong 
the  time  of  obeying  Him  as  I  had  never  done  before.  And  by  my 
continued  endeavour  to  keep  His  whole  law,  inward  and  outward, 
to  the  utmost  of  my  power,  I  was  persuaded  that  I  should  be  accepted 
of  Him,  and  thought  I  was  even  then  in  a  state  of  salvation. 

THE  "HoLY  CLUB." — "In  1730  I  began  visiting  the  prisons, 
assisting  the  poor  and  sick  and  doing  what  other  good  I  could 
by  my  presence  or  my  little  fortune  to  the  bodies  and  souls  of  all 
men.  To  this  end  I  deprived  myself  of  all  superfluities  and 
many  that  are  called  the  necessaries  of  life.  ...  I  carefully  used, 
both  in  public  and  private,  all  the  means  of  grace  at  all  oppor- 
tunities. I  omitted  no  occasion  for  doing  good.  I  for  that  reason 
suffered  evil.  And  all  this  I  knew  to  be  nothing  unless  as  it  was 
directed  towards  inward  holiness.  Accordingly  this,  the  image  of 
God,  was  what  I  aimed  at  in  all,  by  doing  His  will  and  not  my 
own.  Yet  when,  after  continuing  for  some  years  in  this  course,  I 
apprehended  myself  to  be  near  death,  I  could  not  find  that  all  this 

T 


130  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

gave  me  any  assurance  of  acceptance  with  God.  At  this  I  was  not 
a  little  surprised,  not  imagining  I  had  been  all  this  time  building 
on  the  sand  nor  considering  that  '  other  foundation  can  no  man  lay 
than  that  which  is  laid '  by  God,  '  even  Christ  Jesus.' 

THE  MYSTIC. — "  Soon  after  a  contemplative  man  convinced  me 
yet  more  than  I  was  before  convinced  that  outward  works  are 
nothing,  being  alone ;  and  in  several  conversations  instructed  how 
to  pursue  inward  holiness  or  a  union  of  the  soul  with  God.  But 
even  of  his  instructions  (though  I  then  received  them  as  the  words 
of  God)  I  cannot  but  now  observe :  (1)  That  he  spoke  so  in- 
cautiously against  trusting  in  outward  works  that  he  discouraged 
me  from  doing  them  at  all;  (2)  that  he  recommended  mental 
prayer  and  the  like  exercises  as  the  most  effectual  means  of 
purifying  the  soul  and  uniting  it  with  God.  Now  these  were,  in 
truth,  as  much  my  own  works  as  visiting  the  sick  or  clothing  the 
naked ;  and  the  union  with  God,  thus  pursued,  was  as  really  my 
own  righteousness  as  any  I  had  before  pursued  under  another 
name. 

THE  MISSIONARY. — "  In  this  refined  way  of  trusting  to  my  own 
works  and  my  own  righteousness  I  dragged  on  heavily,  finding 
no  comfort  or  help  therein  till  the  time  of  my  leaving  England. 
.  .  .  All  the  time  I  was  at  Savannah  I  was  thus  beating  the  air. 
Being  ignorant  of  the  righteousness  of  Christ,  which,  by  a  living 
faith  in  Him,  bringeth  salvation  to  '  every  one  that  believeth,'  I 
sought  to  establish  my  own  righteousness,  and  so  laboured  in  the 
fire  all  my  days.  .  .  .  Before  I  had  willingly  served  sin ;  now  it  was 
unwillingly,  but  still  I  served  it.  I  fell  and  rose  and  fell  again.  .  .  . 
During  this  whole  struggle  between  nature  and  grace,  which  had 
now  continued  above  ten  years,  I  had  many  remarkable  returns  to 
prayer,  especially  when  I  was  in  trouble.  I  had  many  sensible 
comforts.  .  .  .  But  I  was  still  '  under  the  law,'  not  '  under 
grace.' 

THE  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND. — "  On  my  return  to  England,  Jan- 
uary 1738,  being  in  imminent  danger  of  death  and  very  uneasy  on 
that  account,  I  was  strongly  convinced  that  the  cause  of  that  un- 
easiness was  unbelief,  and  that  the  gaining  of  a  true,  living  faith 
was  the  '  one  thing  needful '  for  me.  But  still  I  fixed  not  this  faith 
on  its  right  object ;  I  meant  only  faith  in  God,  not  faith  in  or 
through  Christ.  I  knew  not  that  I  was  wholly  void  of  this  faith, 
but  only  thought  I  had  enough  of  it." 

That  long  self-analysis  is  clear,  sustained,  and  final. 
As  a  matter  of  intellectual  knowledge,  Wesley,  it  is  need- 
less to  say,  was  familiar  with  the  true  sense  of  Christianity. 
His  Moravian  teacher's  theology  was,  and  is,  in  the 


WHAT   HAD   HAPPENED  131 

Thirty-nine  Articles.  But  for  Wesley,  as  for  his  genera- 
tion, these  had  become  a  set  of  pale  and  colourless 
syllables  out  of  which  all  reality  had  drained.  And  his 
experience  proves  afresh  that  a  creed  may  survive  as  a  bit 
of  literature ;  it  may  be  chanted  in  hymns,  and  woven 
into  prayers  and  solemnly  taught  as  a  theology,  and  yet 
be  exhausted  of  all  life.  The  great  phrases  may  be 
depolarised,  not  to  say  dead. 

And  this  is  a  warning  for  all  time.  Wesley's  Church 
holds  to-day,  and  holds  tenaciously,  the  doctrines  which, 
up  to  this  stage,  Wesley  himself  had  missed.  These, 
indeed,  are  for  us  weighted  by  the  history  they  have 
shaped.  They  are  authenticated  by  the  literature  and  the 
hymnology  they  have  inspired.  They  have  so  completely 
passed  out  of  controversy  that  they  have  become  plati- 
tudes. The  peril  is  they  may  become  unverified  formulae 
again. 

Wesley  declares  that  he  owed  his  conversion  to  the 
teaching  of  Peter  Bohler.  What,  then,  exactly  was  that 
teaching?  Bohler  did  unconsciously  the  supreme  work 
of  his  life  during  those  few  days  in  London  and  at  Oxford 
when  he  was  conversing  with  Wesley.  The  humble- 
minded  Moravian,  wise  only  in  spiritual  science,  touches 
Wesley — and  then  vanishes!  But  he  helped  to  change 
the  religious  history  of  England,  little  as  he  himself 
dreamed  of  it. 

And  what  he  taught  Wesley  is  sufficiently  clear.  In 
substance,  it  was  three  things,  things  which  lie  in  the 
very  alphabet  of  Christianity,  but  which,  somehow,  the 
teachings  of  a  godly  home,  of  a  great  University,  of  an 
ancient  Church,  and  of  famous  books  had  not  taught 
Wesley.  These  are  that  salvation  is  through  Christ's 
atonement  alone  and  not  through  our  own  works ;  that 
its  sole  condition  is  faith ;  and  that  it  is  attested  to  the 
spiritual  consciousness  by  the  Holy  Spirit.  These  truths 
to-day  are  platitudes ;  to  Wesley  they  were,  at  this  stage 
of  his  life,  discoveries. 

Wesley's  mistake  was,  of  course,  fatal.  It  is  perfectly 
clear  that  through  all  the  stages  of  his  experience  up  to 
this  point  self,  in  many  disguises,  had  taken  the  place  of 
Christ.  Wesley  always  puts  the  emphasis  on  himself,  on 
his  own  motives,  acts,  self-denials,  prayers,  aspirations 


132  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

and  not  on  his  Saviour.  And  woe  to  the  soul  that  shifts 
the  centre  of  its  faith  in  this  fashion  and  finds  that  centre, 
not  in  the  redeeming  offices  the  great  and  radiant  figure 
of  the  living  Christ,  but  in  the  imperfect  and  broken 
fragments  of  its  own  acts  and  merits !  Not  even  what 
the  Holy  Ghost  does  in  us  can  at  any  stage  take,  as  the 
reason  of  our  confidence  before  God,  the  place  of  what 
Christ  has  done  for  us. 

But  now,  as  a  result  of  Bohler's  teaching,  there  broke 
on  Wesley's  eyes  a  true  vision  of  the  redeeming  work  and 
offices  of  Jesus  Christ.  Up  to  this  point  he  had  taken 
part  of  those  offices  on  himself — a  mistake  common  in  all 
ages,  repeated  in  myriads  of  lives,  and  always  most  deadly. 
In  the  after  years  of  his  life  his  favourite  text  was  that 
great  passage  which  declares  that  Christ  is  "  made  of  God 
unto  us  wisdom,  righteousness,  sanctification,  and  re- 
demption." But  in  the  sad  years  which  went  before  that 
memorable  hour  in  Aldersgate  Street  Wesley  never  had 
conceived  that  Christ  is  made,  in  some  deep  and  mysteri- 
ous sense,  righteousness  to  the  believing  soul.  As  he 
himself  puts  it:  "I  had  faith,  but  I  fixed  not  this  faith 
on  its  right  object.  I  meant  only  faith  in  God,  not  faith 
in  and  through  Christ." 

Now  not  even  God's  mercy — if  that  mercy  could  come 
to  us  in  some  other  shape  than  that  presented  in  the 
mystery  of  Christ  and  His  redemption — would  satisfy  the 
human  conscience.  Wesley  had,  as  few  men  ever  had, 
the  sense  of  sin  and  its  hatefulness :  a  vision  of  the  divine 
law — holy,  stainless,  august — dishonoured  by  sin.  And 
the  sense  of  the  profound  and  eternal  discord  betwixt 
his  sinful  consciousness  and  the  stainless  righteousness  of 
God  forbade  all  peace.  To  be  barely  forgiven,  spared  by 
divine  mercy,  was  for  Wesley  not  enough,  as  it  cannot  be 
enough  for  any  human  soul.  There  must  be  some  abiding 
and  fundamental  reconciliation  with  righteousness.  Here 
were  two  eternal  contradictories,  mercy  and  justice.  And 
would  it  be  enough  to  walk  through  all  the  paths  of 
eternity  spared  of  God's  mercy,  but  still  condemned  by 
His  justice  ? 

What  the  human  soul  needs  is  some  meeting-point  in 
its  own  consciousness  betwixt  those  two  mighty  opposites. 
And  Wesley  learned  from  Bohler  the  great  secret  of 


WHAT    HAD    HAPPENED  133 

Christianity  —  that  in  Christ  is  found  that  sublime 
meeting-point.  God's  gift  to  the  believing  soul  is  not 
merely  pardon,  but  justification.  Christ  becomes  for  that 
soul  "  the  Lord  our  righteousness."  So  the  vision  which 
transfigured  Wesley's  life  was  that  of  the  complete  and 
all-sufficient  offices  of  Christ  in  redemption — offices  of  a 
grace  high  beyond  our  very  hopes,  and  deep  beyond  our 
comprehension. 

But  Bohler  taught  him,  too,  the  secret  of  personal  and 
saving  faith.  Had  not  Wesley  faith  before  May  24,  1738  ? 
Yes,  and  he  himself  has  told  us  what  kind  of  a  faith  it 
was.  It  was,  he  says,  "a  speculative,  notional,  airy 
shadow  which  lives  in  the  head  and  not  in  the  heart." 
The  homilies  of  his  own  Church,  it  is  true,  might  have 
taught  Wesley  a  better  definition  of  faith  than  this !  It 
is  "  a  sure  trust  and  confidence  which  a  man  hath  in  God 
that  by  the  merits  of  Christ  his  sins  are  forgiven  and  he 
is  reconciled  to  the  favour  of  God."  Wesley  held  this 
definition  of  faith  with  perfect  intellectual  clearness ;  but 
it  was  a  mere  unrealised  abstraction. 

Dr.  Dale  points  out  that  this  definition  is  itself  a  para- 
dox. "  If  faith  is  the  condition  precedent  to  salvation, 
how  can  it  be  a  belief  that  we  are  saved  already  ? "  He 
tries  to  solve  the  paradox  by  asking,  "  Is  it  not  true  that 
God  has  already  given  us — believers  and  unbelievers  alike 
— eternal  redemption  hi  Christ  ? "  Faith  does  not  create 
a  new  fact,  but  only  accepts,  and  brings  into  the  realms 
of  consciousness,  a  fact  which  exists  already  and  inde- 
pendently of  it. 

But  that  is  teaching  which  easily  runs  into  perilous 
realms !  It  may  be  added  that  the  paradox  of  faith  lies 
elsewhere.  If  it  is  "  the  gift  of  God,"  how  can  it  be  itself 
the  condition  of  other  gifts  ?  If  faith  is  the  gift  of  God, 
the  responsibility  of  its  non-existence  lies  on  God !  How 
can  it  be  held  for  guilt  hi  a  man  that  he  does  not  pos- 
sess what  can  only  come  to  him  by  the  gift  of  God  ? 

The  truth,  as  far  as  it  can  be  expressed  in  the  terms  of 
human  thought,  is  that  faith  represents  the  concurrence 
of  two  wills,  the  Divine  and  the  human.  It  is  impossible 
without  the  grace  of  God;  so  that  grace  is  an  essential, 
but  ever-present,  condition  of  its  exercise.  But  even  the 
grace  of  God  does  not  produce  faith  without  the  consent 


134  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

of  the  human  will.  Wesley  learned,  but  learned  late  and 
slowly,  that  faith  is  not  merely  the  struggle  of  the  un- 
aided soul  to  reach  some  act  and  mood  of  confidence.  It 
is  the  surrender  of  the  soul  to  the  helping  grace  of  God ; 
and  only  when  that  surrender  is  made  is  the  soul  up- 
lifted by  a  divine  impulse  to  the  great  heights  of  rejoicing 
trust. 

Wesley  learned  from  Bohler,  too,  that  the  pardon  re- 
ceived from  Christ  is  attested  to  the  pardoned  soul  by 
the  direct  witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  so  it  brings,  as  an 
immediate  fruit,  a  divine  peace.  This  doctrine,  of  course, 
was  already  embedded  in  Wesley's  creed,  and  he  held  it 
with  perfect  intellectual  clearness.  "If  we  dwell  in 
Christ  and  Christ  in  us,"  he  had  written  to  his  mother 
many  years  before,  "certainly  we  must  be  conscious  of 
it.  If  we  can  never  have  any  certainty  that  we  are  in  a 
state  of  salvation,  good  reason  it  is  that  every  moment 
should  be  spent,  not  in  joy,  but  in  fear  and  trembling. 
Then,  undoubtedly,  in  this  life  we  are  of  all  men  most 
miserable." 

And  yet,  unconsciously,  Wesley  had  hitherto  acted  on 
the  theory  that  the  only  confidence  as  to  his  own  spiritual 
state  a  man  can  have,  is  that  which  he  derives  from  the 
contemplation  of  his  own  good  works,  or  which  he  ex- 
tracts, by  a  strictly  logical  process,  from  such  good  works. 
He  practically  held  his  mother's  belief,  that  any  divinely 
given  consciousness  of  acceptance  with  God  was  a  rare 
experience  and  one  confined  to  great  saints.  He  tells 
with  much  simplicity  how  Peter  Bohler  "  now  amazed  me 
more  and  more  by  the  account  he  gave  of  the  fruits  of 
faith,  of  the  holiness  and  happiness  that  he  affirmed  to 
attend  it." 

Yet,  if  any  doctrine  has  on  it  writ  large  the  authority 
of  Scripture  and  the  assent  of  reason,  it  is  the  doctrine  of 
what  is  technically  called  "  assurance."  To  deny  it  is  to 
say  that  our  spiritual  consciousness  has  no  office,  or  that 
it  lies.  As  a  result  of  forgiveness  the  most  stupendous 
change  has  passed  over  the  soul.  Its  relation  to  God  and 
to  His  universe  is  transfigured.  The  forgiven  sinner  is 
no  longer  an  outcast,  but  a  child.  Can  we  persuade 
ourselves  that  this  amazing  change  does  not,  somehow, 
report  itself  to  the  consciousness?  Can  it  be  God's 


WHAT    HAD    HAPPENED  135 

purpose  that  the  child  He  has  received  into  His  family 
again  should  continue  to  believe,  what  is  now  a  lie,  that 
he  is  still  an  outcast?  Though  God  smiles  upon  him 
must  he  still  think  that  He  frowns?  After  sin's  dark 
substance  is  gone,  can  it  be  God's  will  that  its  shadow 
should  remain;  that  the  pardoned  soul  should  carry  the 
burden  of  sin  no  longer  reckoned  against  it,  and  feel  the 
imaginary  stains  of  a  guilt  that  has  been  washed  away  ? 
Is  it  credible  that  the  only  soul  to  whom  God's  face  wears 
a  mask  is  the  soul  He  has  forgiven  ?  And  He  wears  a 
mask  to  hide  His  forgiveness ! 

Surely  this  is  a  paradox  of  incredible  quality !  "  I  be- 
lieve in  the  forgiveness  of  sins."  That  is  a  triumphant 
credo.  But  who  will  rejoice  in  a  forgiveness  so  furtive 
that  not  even  the  soul  to  which  it  is  granted  knows 
whether  or  not  it  has  happened  ? 

The  denial  of  the  witness  of  the  Spirit  involves  the 
most  amazing  contradiction.  The  soul  before  pardon 
believes,  what  is  true,  that  it  is  condemned ;  but  after 
the  great  act  of  pardon  it  believes,  what  is  a  lie,  that  it 
is  still  condemned.  And  God  keeps  silence !  He  sends 
no  sign  or  whisper  of  comfort.  It  is  pleasing  to  Him — 
the  God  of  truth  ! — that  His  restored  and  forgiven  child 
should  still  live  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  falsehood !  This 
is  an  incredibility  of  transcendent  scale !  It  is  in  direct 
contradiction  to  God's  Word :  "  The  Spirit  itself  beareth 
witness  with  our  spirit  that  we  are  the  children  of  God." 

This  divine  witness  does  not  belong  to  the  realm  of 
miracle.  It  is  not  independent,  as  Wesley's  experience 
shows,  of  human  conditions.  It  varies  with  the  mood 
of  the  human  heart  itself ;  it  wanes  with  waning  faith  or 
grows  clearer  with  deepening  earnestness. 

It  is  striking  to  notice  the  variations  in  Wesley's  own 
inood  even  after  this  great  experience  caine  to  him.  On 
the  very  night  of  May  24,  after  he  had  left  the  little  room 
in  Aldersgate  Street,  he  says,  "  I  was  much  buffeted  with 
temptations,  but  cried  out  and  they  fled  away."  They 
returned  again  and  again.  Two  days  later  he  describes 
himself  as  "  in  heaviness  because  of  manifold  tempta- 
tions." Still  later  he  finds  "  a  want  of  joy,"  and  traces 
its  cause  to  "want  of  timely  prayer."  In  Wesley's  ex- 
perience, in  brief,  as  in  the  experience  of  all  Christians, 


136  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

there  are  fluctuations  of  spiritual  mood.  But  his  experi- 
ence now  had  one  new  feature.  He  had  still  to  maintain 
a  daily  fight  with  the  forces  of  evil ;  but  he  says,  "  herein 
I  found  the  difference  between  this  and  my  former  state. 
Then  I  was  sometimes,  if  not  often,  conquered.  Now  I 
was  always  conqueror!"  Here  was  struggle;  but  here, 
too,  was  victory ! 


BOOK  III 

THE   QUICKENING   OF  A   NATION 


CHAPTER    I 

ENGLAND    IN    THE    EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

"  Our  light  looks  like  the  evening  of  the  world : "  in  those 
pathetic  and  expressive  words  a  "  Proposal  for  a  National 
Reformation  of  Manners,"  published  in  1694,  described 
the  moral  condition  of  England  at  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  A  new  century  was  dawning,  but  it 
seemed  as  if  in  the  spiritual  sky  of  England  the  very 
light  of  Christianity  itself  was  being  turned,  by  some 
strange  and  evil  force,  into  darkness.  And  it  was  upon 
a  moral  landscape  of  this  sort,  dark  with  the  shadows 
as  of  some  dreadful  and  swift-coming  spiritual  eclipse, 
that  Wesley  was  about  to  begin  his  work.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  understand  the  scale  and  power  of  that  work 
without  some  preliminary  attempt  to  realise  the  field 
upon  which  it  was  done. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  testimonies  showing  how 
exhausted  of  living  religion,  how  black  with  every  kind 
of  wickedness,  was  the  England  of  that  day.  Its  ideals 
were  gross;  its  sports  were  brutal;  its  public  life  was 
corrupt;  its  vice  was  unashamed.  Walpole,  indeed,  did 
not  invent  political  corruption,  but  he  systematise*!  it; 
he  erected  it  into  a  policy ;  ne  made  it  shameless !  Cruelty 
fermented  in  the  pleasures  of  the  crowd,  foulness  stained 
the  general  speech.  Judges  swore  on  the  bench  ;  the 
chaplain  cursed  the  sailors  to  make  them  attentive  to 
his  sermons ;  the  king  swore  incessantly,  and  at  the  top 
of  his  voice.  The  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  a  story  runs, 
called  on  a  lawyer  without  leaving  her  name.  "  I  could  not 
make  out  who  she  was,"  said  the  clerk  afterwards, "  but  she 
swore  so  dreadfully  she  must  be  a  lady  of  quality." 

Ferocious  laws  still  lingered  on  the  Statute-Book. 
Justice  itself  was  cruel.  As  late  as  1735  men  were 
pressed  to  death  who  refused  to  plead  on  a  capital 
charge.  The  law  under  which  women  were  liable  to  be 

139 


140  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

publicly  flogged,  or  to  be  burned  at  the  stake,  was  not 
repealed  till  1794.  Temple  Bar  was  adorned  with  a 
perpetually  renewed  fresco  of  human  heads.  It  was  the 
age  of  the  pillory  and  of  the  whipping-post ;  of  gin-hells, 
and  of  debtors'  prisons,  hideous  enough  to  have  darkened 
Dante's  Inferno  with  a  new  gloom.  Drunkenness  was  the 
familiar  and  unrebuked  habit  even  of  Ministers  of  the 
State.  Adultery  was  a  sport,  and  the  shame  lay  not  on 
the  false  wife  or  on  the  smiling  gallant,  but  on  the  be- 
trayed husband. 

But  it  is  unfair  to  judge  any  age  by  its  vices.  Human 
wickedness  blackens,  more  or  less,  every  century.  Who 
wants  to  know  how  low  England  had  sunk  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  must  judge  of  it,  not  by  its  worst,  but 
by  its  best  elements — by  its  religion,  or  what  in  it  was 
mistaken  for  religion ;  and  by  the  teachers  of  that  religion. 
For  there  is  no  surer  test  of  a  religion  than  the  sort  of 
teachers  it  produces. 

It  is  hardly  fair,  perhaps,  to  go  to  a  satirist  in  search 
of  a  portrait;  and  Thackeray's  portraits  of  eighteenth- 
century  divines  are,  no  doubt,  etched  hi  acid.  But  they 
are  not  untrue  to  life ;  their  power,  indeed,  lies  in  their 
truth.  Of  George  II.,  the  little,  hot-tempered,  pugnacious 
monarch,  with  the  morals  and  manners  of  a  Jonathan 
Wild  in  purple,  Thackeray  writes  in  sword-edged  phrases. 
And  George  II.  had  divines  who  matched  his  morals ;  who 
even  consented  to  treat  his  amazing  morals  as  virtues ! 

The  King  was  dead;  and  "it  was  a  parson,"  says 
Thackeray,  "who  came  and  wept  over  this  grave,  with 
Walmoden  (one  of  the  dead  King's  many  mistresses) 
sitting  on  it,  and  claimed  heaven  for  the  poor  old  man 
slumbering  below.  Here  was  one  who  had  neither  dignity, 
learning,  morals,  nor  wit — who  tainted  a  great  society 
by  a  bad  example;  who  in  youth,  manhood,  old  age, 
was  gross,  low,  and  sensual ;  and  Mr.  Porteus,  afterwards 
my  Lord  Bishop  Porteus,  says  the  earth  was  not  good 
enough  for  him,  and  that  his  only  place  was  heaven ! 
Bravo,  Mr.  Porteus!  The  divine  who  wept  these  tears 
over  George  the  Second's  memory  wore  George  the 
Third's  lawn." 

Thackeray  draws  a  life-like  picture  of  another  divine 
of  that  day — the  type  of  a  class — Selwyn's  chaplain  and 


ENGLAND   IN   THE    EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY       141 

parasite,  who  has  written  down  his  own  character  in  his 
own  letters.  And  Thackeray  sets  the  dreadful  portrait 
in  the  perspective  of  history,  when 

"all  the  foul  pleasures  and  gambols  in  which  he  revelled  were 
played  out ;  all  the  rouged  faces  into  which  he  leered  were  worms 
and  skulls;  all  the  fine  gentlemen  whose  shoebuckles  he  kissed 
lay  in  their  coffins.  This  worthy  clergyman  takes  care  to  tell  us 
that  he  does  not  believe  in  his  religion,  though,  thank  heaven, 
he  is  not  so  great  a  rogue  as  a  lawyer.  He  goes  on  Mr.  Selwyn's 
errands,  any  errands,  and  is  proud,  he  says,  to  be  that  gentleman's 
proveditor.  He  waits  upon  the  Duke  of  Queensberry — '  old  Q  ' — 
and  exchanges  pretty  stories  with  that  aristocrat.  He  comes 
home  '  sifter  a  hard  day's  christening,'  as  he  says,  and  writes  to 
his  patron  before  sitting  down  to  whist  and  partridges  for  supper. 
He  revels  in  the  thoughts  of  oxcheek  and  burgundy — he  is  a 
boisterous,  uproarious  parasite,  licks  his  master's  shoes  with  ex- 
plosions of  laughter,  and  cunning  smack  and  gusto,  and  likes  the 
taste  of  that  blacking  as  much  as  the  best  claret  in  old  Q.'s  cellar. 
He  has  '  Rabelais '  and  '  Horace '  at  his  greasy  fingers'  ends.  He 
is  inexpressibly  mean — curiously  jolly  ;  kindly  and  good-natured 
in  secret — a  tender-hearted  knave,  not  a  venomous  lickspittle. 
Jesse  says  that  at  his  chapel  in  Long  Acre,  '  he  attained  a  con- 
siderable popularity  by  the  pleasing,  manly,  and  eloquent  style 
of  his  delivery.' " 

"  Was  infidelity  endemic,  and  corruption  in  the  air  ? " 
asks  Thackeray  as  he  contemplates  such  amazing  divines. 
The  bad  morals  of  George  II.,  he  goes  on  to  say,  bore 
their  fruit  in  the  early  years  of  George  III.,  and  the 
result  was  a  court  and  a  society  as  dissolute  as  England 
ever  knew.  Thackeray  was  a  satirist,  but  these  pictures 
owe  nothing  to  the  gall  in  his  inkpot.  The  satire,  we 
repeat,  lies  in  their  truth. 

Now,  a  religion  has  always  the  sort  of  clergy  it  de- 
serves ;  and,  taken  as  a  class,  the  clergy  of  the  eighteenth 
century  were  gross  and  unspiritual  because  they  repre- 
sented a  faith  exhausted  of  all  spiritual  force.  If,  in 
the  England  of  that  day,  we  look  behind  all  mere  failures 
in  external  morality  to  the  spiritual  causes  which  account 
for  them,  these  are  clear.  It  was  the  age  of  a  shallow 
and  confident  Deism ;  a  Deism  exultant  and  militant, 
served  by  wit  and  humour  as  well  as  defended  by  logic. 
It  had  capturec1  literature ;  it  coloured  the  general  imagi- 


142  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

nation ;  it  stained  the  common  speech ;  it  sat  enthroned 
in  the  place  of  Christian  faith. 

Now  Deism  of  any  type  is  morally  impotent;  and 
Deism  of  the  eighteenth-century  type  is  nothing  but  a 
little  patch  of  uncertain  quicksand  set  in  a  black  sea  of 
atheism.  It  does  not  deny  God's  existence,  but  it  cancels 
Him  out  as  a  force  in  human  life.  It  breaks  the  golden 
ladder  of  revelation  betwixt  heaven  and  earth.  It  leaves 
the  Bible  discredited,  duty  a  guess,  heaven  a  freak  of 
the  uncharted  imagination,  and  God  a  vague  and  far- 
off  shadow.  Men  were  left  by  it  to  climb  into  a  shadowy 
heaven  on  some  frail  ladder  of  human  logic.  And  while 
in  those  sad  days  there  was  this  obscuring  mist  of 
Deism  outside  the  Churches,  inside  them  there  was  a 
mist  almost:  as  evil  and  dense.  Open  and  confessed 
Arianism  had  captured  almost  completely  the  dissenting 
Churches ;  and  an  unconscious  and  practical  Arianism 
reigned,  in  spite  of  its  Articles,  in  the  Anglican  Church. 
The  sense  of  sin  was  faint ;  and  with  it  had  grown  faint, 
too,  the  doctrine  of  a  divine  and  redeeming  Christ. 

The  religious  literature  of  that  age  shows  how  curiously 
pale  and  ineffective  the  notion  of  God  had  become  for 
even  those  who  professed  to  be  His  ministers.  In  the 
theology  of  the  time  "God,"  says  Sir  Leslie  Stephen, 
"  was  an  idol  compounded  of  fragments  of  tradition  and 
of  frozen  metaphysics."  1  There  was  a  God  ;  and  He  had 
once  touched  human  life.  But  it  was  a  long  time  ago, 
and  in  a  far-off  land.  He  had  now  emigrated  from  His 
own  world.  The  grotesque  Deity  of  Bishop  Warburton 
was,  to  quote  Leslie  Stephen  again,  "  a  supernatural  chief- 
justice  whose  sentences  were  carried  out  in  a  non-natural 
world;  a  constitutional  monarch  who  had  signed  a  con- 
stitutionali  compact  and  retired  from  the  active  govern- 
ment of  affairs."  Of  God  as  the  Father  of  our  spirits,  as 
actually  living  in  His  own  universe  and  ruling  men's 
lives ;  God  of  whom  it  might  be  said  in  Tennyson's  words : 

"  Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  nearer  than  hands  or  feet," 

no  trace  is  to  be  found  in  the  theology  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Superstition,  according  to  its  theologians,  con- 

1  "  History  of  English  Thought,"  &c.,  vol.  ii.  p.  338. 


ENGLAND   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY       143 

sisted  in  the  belief  that  God  ever  revealed  Himself  in  the 
affairs  of  the  modern  world.  Fanaticism  was  the  imagi- 
nation that  He  revealed  Himself  by  any  touch,  or  breath, 
or  thrill  of  influence  to  the  personal  soul. 

Deism,  we  repeat,  thick  with  Arctic  fogs  and  frozen 
with  Arctic  chills,  constitutes  the  working  theology  of 
that  unhappy  age.  In  that  theology  Christ  is  attenuated 
to  a  shadow.  He  serves  as  a  label  for  a  creed,  but  He 
has  only  the  offices  of  a  label.  His  Gospel  did  not  consist 
of  "  good  news,"  but  only  of  good  advice.  It  was  not  a 
deliverance,  but  a  philosophy.  A  decent  Chinaman  who 
took  Confucius  seriously  might  almost  have  preached 
nine-tenths  of  the  sermons  of  that  period.  If  he  had 
concealed  his  pig-tail,  altered  his  complexion,  disguised 
himself  in  cassock  and  bands,  learned  a  few  technical 
phrases,  and  spoken  of  the  Gospels  as  true  but  very  re- 
mote histories,  he  might  have  passed  for  a  sound  divine, 
with  a  very  orthodox  appetite  for  a  fat  benefice.  Lecky 
says,  with  cruel  accuracy, "  Beyond  a  belief  in  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  and  a  general  acknowledgment  of  ,the 
veracity  of  the  Gospel  narratives,  the  divines  of  that  day 
taught  little  which  might  not  have  been  taught  by  the 
disciples  of  Socrates  or  the  followers  of  Confucius." 

Now  Christianity  does  not  consist  in  a  code  of  ethics. 
It  is  not  a  chapter  of  remote  history.  It  is  a  group  of 
great  and  majestic  truths ;  truths  which  transcend  the 
understanding,  and  are  robed  in  mystery ;  but  which  must 
shape  our  lives.  First  and  last  it  is  a  message  of  redeem- 
ing love.  The  mystery  of  a  divine  propitiation  through 
the  blood  of  Christ,  of  access  to  God  through  the  priestly 
offices  of  Christ,  is  of  its  very  essence.  Its  supreme  gift 
is  the  life  of  God  restored  in  the  soul  by  the  mighty 
grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

But  all  these  great  doctrines,  which  do  not  so  much 
belong  to  Christianity  as  constitute  it,  had  somehow 
slipped,  not  merely  from  human  faith,  but  almost  from 
human  recollection  at  this  stage  of  English  -  speaking 
Christianity.  The  message  of  "  entrance  into  the  Holiest 
by  the  blood  of  Jesus "  had  no  meaning  for  men  who 
believed  they  could  saunter  into  God's  presence  with  a 
few  polite  compliments  at  any  time.  In  the  religion  of 
that  day  there  were  no  tears  of  repentance.  The  note 


144  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

of  passion  is  silent;  the  hush  of  reverence  is  missing. 
And  all  this  because  the  vision  of  God  had  grown  faint : 
the  sense  of  sin — of  what  sin  means,  and  of  God's  remedy 
for  it — had  perished. 

Now  a  religion  exhausted  of  its  supernatural  contents  in 
this  fashion  has  no  power  over  the  human  conscience.  It 
transfigures  no  lives.  It  inspires  no  martyrs.  It  creates 
no  saints.  It  sends  out  no  missionaries.  It  generates  a 
morality  of  ignoble  temper.  It  resembles  nothing  so  much 
as  an  atmosphere  exhausted  of  oxygen. 

And  the  religion  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  treated 
as  it  deserved  to  be  treated.  Its  very  sacraments,  "  the 
symbols  of  atoning  grace,"  became,  in  Cowper's  phrase, 

"An  office  key,  a  pick-lock  to  a  place." 

Swift,  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Stella,  writes:  "I  was 
early  in  to  see  the  Secretary,  Bolingbroke,  but  he  was 
gone  to  his  devotions  and  to  receive  the  Sacrament ; 
several  rakes  did  the  same.  It  was  not  for  piety,  but 
for  employment,  according  to  Act  of  Parliament."  Such 
a  religion  could  not  inspire  a  saintly  or  an  heroic 
ministry;  and  certainly  there  was  not  much  that  was 
saintly,  and  still  less  that  was  heroic,  in  the  temper  of 
the  Anglican  clergy  in  the  days  of  the  early  Georges. 
The  first  great  duty  of  religion  was  to  be  tepid.  There 
must  be  no  enthusiasm,  no  heroics.  Extremes  were  to 
be  shunned.  "  We  should  take  care  never  to  overshoot 
ourselves,  even  in  the  pursuits  of  virtues,"  was  the  counsel 
of  one  of  the  preachers  of  that  age.  "  Whether  zeal  or 
moderation  be  the  point  we  aim  at,  let  us  keep  fire  out 
of  one  and  frost  out  of  the  other."  "  Those  words,"  says 
Miss  Wedgwood,  "  are  the  motto  of  the  Church  of  the 
eighteenth  century."  Its  divines  were  much  more  afraid 
of  being  suspected  of  believing  too  much,  than  of  doubting 
everything. 

Christianity  was  diligently  watered  down,  by  its  own 
teachers,  into  insipid  platitudes.  The  sin  against  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  by  Bishop  Clarke  diluted  into  "  a  per- 
verse refusal  to  be  convinced  by  the  highest  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  Christianity."  The  motive  by  which 
religion  was  urged  on  the  conscience  was  at  bottom  an 


ENGLAND   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY       145 

appeal  to  cowardice.  Bishop  Sherlock,  indeed,  resolves 
religion  into  a  judicious  balance  of  odds.  "  It  is  ten  to 
one,"  he  says,  in  substance,  "that  religion  is  true.  If  it 
turns  out  to  be  false  the  Christian  has  only  lost  one- 
tenth  of  the  amount  he  staked.  If  it  turns  out  to  be 
true,  the  sinner  has  made  a  very  bad  bargain  indeed." 
Logic  is  the  one  instrument  of  a  tepid  religion.  So  all 
the  teaching  and  preaching  of  the  eighteenth-century 
divines  is  hi  the  terms  of  logic,  and  has  the  chill  of  logic. 
The  religious  teachers  of  that  day,  in  a  word,  had  but 
half-beliefs,  and  out  of  half-beliefs  no  heroic  morality 
can  be  extracted. 

Leslie  Stephen  says  of  the  most  famous  preacher  of 
that  day,  Blair,  that  "he  was  a  mere  washed-out  dealer 
of  second-hand  commonplaces,  who  gives  the  impression 
that  the  real  man  has  vanished  and  left  nothing  but  a 
wig  and  gown."  Bishop  Warburton's  conception  of  the 
Christian  Church  may  be  gathered  from  a  sentence  in 
one  of  his  letters.  "  The  Church,"  he  says,  "  like  the 
ark  of  Noah,  is  worth  saving,  not  for  the  sake  of  the 
unclean  beasts  that  almost  fill  it  and  make  most  noise 
and  clamour  in  it ;  but  for  the  little  corner  of  rationality 
that  is  much  more  depressed  by  the  stink  within  than  by 
the  tempest  without."  Middleton,  another  Church  digni- 
tary of  that  day,  wrote  a  letter  to  Lord  Hervey  ridiculing 
the  Articles  which  he  was  about  to  sign  in  order  to  take 
possession  of  a  living. 

"  Though  there  are  many  things  in  the  Church  (he  says)  that 
I  wholly  dislike,  yet  while  I  am  content  to  acquiesce  in  the  ill 
I  shall  be  glad  to  taste  a  little  of  the  good,  and  so  have  some 
amends  for  that  ugly  assent  and  consent  which  no  man  of  sense 
will  approve  of.  We  read  of  some  of  the  earliest  disciples  of 
Christ  who  followed  Him,  not  for  His  works,  but  for  His  loaves. 
To  us  who  had  not  the  happiness  to  see  the  one  it  may  be  allowed 
to  have  some  inclination  to  the  other.  Your  lordship  knows  a 
certain  person  who,  with  a  very  low  notion  of  the  Church's  sacred 
bread,  has  a  very  high  relish  for  a  very  large  share  of  the  temporal. 
My  appetite  for  each  is  equally  moderate.  I  have  no  pretensions 
to  riot  in  the  feast  of  the  elect,  but  with  the  sinner  in  the  Gospel 
to  gather  up  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  table." 

Now  a  religion  of  this  type,  and  served  by  such 
ministers,  inevitably  bred  ignoble  lives.  Piety  was  but 

K 


146  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

a  skin  of  external  habits,  a  form  of  prudence  extended 
into  the  spiritual  world.  If  the  dusty  sermons  of  that 
age  are  put  into  the  retort  and  their  essence  distilled, 
it  will  be  seen  to  consist  of  exhortations  like  these : 
"  Don't  be  drunk,  or  you  will  ruin  your  health ;  nor 
commit  murder,  or  you  shall  be  hanged.  Every  man 
should  be  happy,  and  the  way  to  be  happy  is  to  be 
thoroughly  respectable." 

The  opinion  that  Christianity  was  untrue,  but  useful 
to  society,  representsl  the  working  creed  of  the  educated 
classes.  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  reports  a  plan 
on  foot  for  taking  the  "  not "  out  of  the  Commandments 
and  putting  it  in  the  Creed.  That  is  a  flash  of  feminine 
satire ;  but  it  represents  the  theory  on  which  whole  mul- 
titudes lived. 

Bishop  Butler  has  painted  the  spirit  of  his  time  in  dark 
and  imperishable  colours.  "  The  deplorable  distinction  of 
our  age,"  he  says,  "  is  an  avowed  scorn  of  religion,  and  a 
growing  disregard  of  it."  But  Butler  himself,  with  all  his 
high  gifts,  supplies,  in  his  own  person,  an  expressive  proof 
of  the  spiritual  blindness  and  death  which  lay  on  the 
Churches  of  that  day.  He  forbade  Whitefield  and  the 
Wesleys  to  preach  in  his  diocese,  though  all  around  his 
cathedral  city  lay  the  most  degraded  and  hopeless  class 
in  England — the  coal-miners  of  Kingswood,  as  untouched 
by  any  of  the  forces  of  Christianity  as  if  they  had  been 
savages  in  Central  Africa.  That  the  best,  the  wisest,  the 
most  powerful,  the  most  earnestly  convinced  of  the  bishops 
of  that  day  should  take  this  attitude  towards  Wesley  and 
his  work  shows  what  was  the  general  temper  of  the  clergy 
of  that  time.  Butler's  conscience  was  not  disquieted  by 
the  lapse  into  mere  heathenism  of  a  whole  class  within 
sound  of  the  bells  of  his  cathedral ;  but  he  grows  piously 
indignant  at  the  spectacle  of  an  ecclesiastical  irregularity ! 
Enthusiasm  in  good  men  was,  in  his  eyes,  a  more  alarm- 
ing spectacle  than  vice  in  bad  men.  What  more  signifi- 
cant inversion  of  spiritual  values  can  be  imagined ! 

No  feature  of  the  eighteenth  century,  indeed,  is  more 
curious,  or  more  deeply  characteristic,  than  its  dread  of 
"enthusiasm."  It  was  the  accursed  thing!  A  sound 
divine  was  much  more  anxious  to  purge  himself  of  the 
suspicion  of  enthusiasm,  than  of  the  scandal  of  heresy. 


ENGLAND   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY       147 

It  was  an  age  of  compromise ;  of  compromises  in  politics, 
in  philosophy,  in  theology ;  and  compromises  are  fatal  to 
enthusiasm.  They  must  kill  it,  or  be  killed  by  it. 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  two  great  waves  of  passion 
had  recently  swept  over  England — the  Puritan  wave  that 
culminated  and  broke  hi  the  Civil  War;  and  the  recoil 
from  Puritanism  which  found  its  triumph  in  the  Restora- 
tion. Great  debates,  fought  with  sword  and  musket,  with 
the  prison  and  the  pillory,  with  Acts  of  Parliament  and 
sentences  of  the  courts,  had  left  England  exhausted.  The 
Whig  spirit  of  compromise  which  explains  the  Revolution 
of  1688  had  captured  the  realm  of  religion.  Men  were 
still  sore  with  the  wounds  of  the  strife.  The  public  mind 
was  hi  a  mood  of  reflux.  It  dreaded  passion.  It  hated 
fanatics.  Enthusiasm  was  a  word  suspect.  Moderation 
was  the  chief  thing. 

Now  enthusiasm  has,  or  ought  to  have,  its  last  strong- 
hold in  religion,  and  in  the  men  who  are  the  teachers  of 
religion.  But  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  clergy  were 
the  one  class  in  the  whole  nation  in  which  the  fires  of 
enthusiasm  were  most  completely  extinct;  and  this  as  a 
result  of  then*  own  acts.  Within  a  single  generation  they 
had,  first,  taught  the  divine  right  of  Kings,  and  fiercely 
persecuted  all  who  doubted  that  doctrine.  Then,  after 
1688,  they  swallowed  their  principles,  took  the  oath 
of  allegiance  to  William,  and  proceeded  to  hunt  out  of 
rectory  and  parsonage  the  stubborn  remnant  of  their  own 
brethren  who  declined  to  turn  their  back  on  their  prin- 
ciples with  the  same  cheerful  facility!  Principle  of  the 
high  and  austere  sort  was,  for  the  moment,  discredited  in 
this  dreadful  fashion  by  the  example  set  by  the  clergy 
themselves. 

There  were  some  bright  spots,  it  is  true,  even  in  this 
dark  landscape.  Amongst  the  fat,  well-beneficed,  un- 
spiritual  bishops  of  that  day  stand  the  almost  saintly 
figures  of  Butler  and  of  Berkeley.  The  century  which 
counted  William  Law  amongst  its  theologians,  and  Watts 
and  Doddridge  amongst  its  singers,  still  had  some  of  the 
divine  glow  of  religion  hi  its  veins.  And  there  must  have 
been  many  an  English  rectory,  beside  Epworth  Parsonage 
in  which  burned  the  clear  flame  of  household  piety. 

And  yet  the  spiritual  life  of  England  at  tnis  moment 


148  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

was  beyond  all  doubt  swiftly  draining  away.  Its  public 
life  corrupt ;  its  clergy  discredited  ;  its  Church  frozen ;  its 
theology  exhausted  of  Christian  elements.  This  was  the 
England  of  the  eighteenth  century  !  It  needed  a  spiritual 
revolution  to  save  such  a  people.  The  airs  of  Pentecost 
must  blow  afresh  over  the  dying  land  ;  the  fires  of  a  new 
Pentecost  must  fall  to  kindle  the  flame  of  faith  in  men's 
souls  once  more.  And  Wesley  was  called,  and  trained  by 
God,  for  that  great  task. 


CHAPTER  II 

BEGINNING   THE   WORK 

WESLEY'S  conversion  perplexed  some  of  his  friends  and 
alarmed  others.  "  If  you  were  not  a  Christian  ever  since 
I  knew  you,"  said  Mrs.  Hutton,  the  mother  of  his  friend, 
"  you  were  a  great  hypocrite,  for  you  made  us  all  believe 
you  were  one."  Samuel  Wesley  received  the  news  with  a 
sort  of  bewildered  anger  which  is  almost  amusing.  His 
brother,  he  held,  was  suffering  from  an  attack  of  "enthu- 
siasm " — a  disease  much  more  deadly  than  any  known  to 
medical  science.  "  Falling  into  enthusiasm,"  he  writes, 
"  is  being  lost  with  a  witness.  I  pleased  mvself  with  the 
expectation  of  seeing  Jack,  but  now  that  is  over,  and  I 
am  afraid  of  it.  I  heartily  pray  God  to  stop  the  progress 
of  this  lunacy.  .  .  .  What  Jack  means  by  his  not  being  a 
Christian  till  last  month  I  understand  not,"  cries  this 
bewildered  High  Churchman.  "  Is  baptism  nothing  ? 
.  .  .  He  must  be  either  unbaptized  or  an  apostate  to 
make  his  words  true." 

But  then  John  Wesley  had  already  moved  to  another 
spiritual  climate.  In  his  spiritual  chronology  the  birth- 
day of  a  Christian  "was  now  shifted  from  his  baptism  to 
his  conversion ;  and  "  in  that  change,"  as  Miss  Wedgwood 
says,  with  a  flash  of  profound  insight,  "  the  partition  line 
of  two  great  systems  is  crossed." 

Wesley,  however,  was  the  last  man  to  be  moved  by 
the  alarms  and  perplexities  of  his  friends.  Already,  on 
June  13 — only  three  weeks  after  his  conversion — he  was 
on  his  way  to  Germany  to  visit  the  Moravian  settlements. 
He  loved  to  study  religion  in  the  concrete,  to  try  it  by 
the  supreme  test  of  life.  The  actual  experience  of  the 
human  soul  was  for  him  the  final  lo<ric.  In  the  Moravian 
settlements  at  Herrnhut  he  would  find  a  whole  com- 
munity living  by  the  great  truths  he  had  just  learned, 
and  he  hastened  to  cross-examine  the  experiences  of 


149 


150  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

these  simple-minded  Moravians;  to  study  the  social 
order  they  had  evolved  and  the  manner  of  life  they 
lived. 

He  spent  three  months  in  this  business,  returning  to 
England  on  September  16,  and  his  Journal  gives  a  picture, 
half  amusing  and  half  pathetic,  of  Wesley's  conversations 
with  group  after  group  of  these  godly  peasants,  and  the 
anxious  yet  simple-minded  questions  by  which  he  interro- 
gated their  beliefs  and  emotions.  In  the  rough  guttural  of 
peasant's  German,  or  filtered  through  a  Latin  translation, 
the  experiences  of  one  devout  Moravian  after  another 
reached  Wesley,  and  he  listened  with  musing  brow  and 
patient  eyes.  Here  was  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  trans- 
lated into  terms  of  human  life  and  spread  out  before  his 
eyes.  Here  was  Christ's  Gospel  verified !  Wesley  wrote 
to  his  brother  Samuel,  "  I  am  with  a  Church  whose  con- 
versation is  in  heaven,  in  whom  is  the  mind  that  was  in 
Christ,  and  who  walk  as  He  walked.  Oh,  how  high  and 
holy  a  thing  Christianity  is,  and  how  widely  distinct  from 
that — I  know  not  what — which  is  so  called,  though  it 
neither  purifies  the  heart  nor  renews  the  life." 

Wesley  met  Count  Zinzendorf,  the  head  of  the  Moravian 
community,  a  man  with  a  genius  for  religion  and  in  a 
hundred  ways  remarkable  ;  but  it  is  curious  to  note  that 
Zinzendorf,  who  in  social  standing  and  in  education  was 
so  much  nearer  Wesley  than  Bohler,  impressed  Wesley 
much  less  than  did  that  lowly-minded  missionary.  There 
was  a  narrower  spiritual  interval  betwixt  Bohler  and  Wesley 
than  betwixt  Zinzendorf  and  Wesley ;  and  Wesley  was  in 
that  mood  when  social  distance  does  not  count. 

Wesley  took  part  in  the  religious  services  of  the  Mora- 
vians with  keenest  sympathy,  and  sat,  with  the  simplicity 
of  a  child,  at  the  feet  of  peasant  -  elder  or  carpenter- 
preacher  in  turn.  But  he  could  not  part  with  his  ob- 
stinate English  common-sense,  and  he  studied  the  whole 
system  and  the  type  of  piety  it  produced  with  shrewd 
eyes.  On  his  return  to  England  he  wrote  to  Count 
Zinzendorf  a  grateful  letter,  full  of  the  praise  of  what 
he  had  seen;  but,  he  added,  he  hoped  later  to  give  his 
Moravian  friends  "  the  fruit  of  my  love  by  speaking  freely 
on  a  few  things  which  I  did  not  approve,  perhaps  because 
I  did  not  understand  them." 


BEGINNING   THE   WORK  151 

What  those  "few  things"  were  of  which  Wesley's  keen 
common  -  sense  disapproved  is  described  later,  and  at 
length.  But  on  the  whole  Wesley  came  back  from  his 
Moravian  tour  with  faith  reinforced.  His  new  spiritual 
experiences  were  really  not  new.  They  belonged  to  a 
line  of  human  experience  which  ran  back  through  all 
the  saints  to  the  days  of  the  Apostles.  He  had  seen 
them  shared  by  hundreds  of  living  men  and  women,  in 
whom  they  bore  all  their  ancient  fruits  of  saintship. 
Wesley  brought  back  from  Herrnhut  the  exultant  sense 
that  he  stood  in  a  goodly  companionship. 

From  this  moment  the  character  of  Wesley's  work 
changes.  He  is  living  in  a  new  spiritual  climate.  Re- 
ligion is  for  him  no  longer  an  experiment.  It  is  an 
attainment !  It  belongs  to  the  realm  of  certainties.  He 
has  an  exultant  confidence  hi  proclaiming  it,  and  his 
work  gains  instantly  a  new  and  strangely  concentrated 
energy. 

The  story  of  his  first  week's  work  is  a  striking  expres- 
sion of  zeal.  He  reached  London  on  Saturday  night, 
September  16,  preached  four  times  on  Sunday,  met  the 
little  Moravian  society,  which  now  numbered  thirty-two 
persons,  on  Monday ;  on  Tuesday  he  visited  the  con- 
demned felons  at  Newgate  and  preached  in  the  evening 
at  Aldersgate  Street.  All  the  days  of  the  week  were,  in 
fact,  filled  up  with  preaching  and  private  visitations. 
And  at  last  Wesley  has  somehow  found  the  key  to  the 
human  heart.  His  speech  had  always  possessed  strange 
power  to  disquiet  the  conscience,  but  now  there  is  a  new 
quality  in  his  message.  It  brings  peace  to  those  con- 
sciences it  formerly  could  only  disquiet. 

His  Journal  is  rich  with  brief  and  sometimes  appar- 
ently unconscious  records  of  success,  both  in  preaching 
to  great  congregations  and  in  dealing  with  individuals. 
"  One  who  had  long  scoffed  at  spiritual  religion "  sent  an 
urgent  message  to  Wesley  to  visit  him.  "  He  had  all 
the  signs,"  says  Wesley,  "  of  settled  despair,  both  in  his 
countenance  and  behaviour.  He  said  he  had  been  en- 
slaved to  sin  many  years,  especially  to  drunkenness.  .  .  . 
I  desired  that  we  might  join  in  prayer.  After  a  short 
space  he  rose,  and  his  countenance  was  no  longer  sad; 
he  said,  '  Now  I  know  God  loveth  me,  and  hath  forgiven 


152  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

my  sins,  and  sin  shall  not  have  dominion  over  me,  for 
Christ  hath  set  me  free.' "  "  And,"  says  Wesley,  "  accord- 
ing to  his  faith  it  was  unto  him." 

He  records  again :  "  At  St.  Thomas's,  a  young  woman 
raving  mad,  screaming  and  tormenting  herself  continu- 
ally ;  I  had  a  strong  desire  to  speak  to  her.  The  moment 
I  began  she  was  still.  The  tears  ran  down  her  cheeks 
all  the  time  I  was  telling  her  '  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  able 
and  willing  to  deliver  you.'  ...  I  expounded  at  Mr.  Fox's, 
as  usual,  the  great  power  of  God  with  us,  and  one  who 
had  been  in  despair  several  years  received  the  witness 
that  she  was  a  child  of  God."  Such  records  as  these 
begin  to  shine  like  stars  in  the  hitherto  clouded  and 
troubled  firmament  of  Wesley's  Journal. 

Wesley,  it  is  clear,  now  stands  fitly  equipped  on  the 
threshold  of  the  true  work  of  his  life  —  the  religious 
awakening  of  his  countrymen.  His  spiritual  training, 
in  a  sense,  is  complete.  He  has  a  real  Gospel  to  preach  ; 
the  good  tidings  of  religion  as  a  deliverance,  not  as  a 
new  and  intolerable  bondage.  And  he  can  proclaim  this 
Gospel  with  a  new  accent  of  certainty.  It  is  verified 
in  his  own  experience,  and  confirmed  by  the  witness 
of  multitudes.  He  has  all  his  old  thoroughness,  his 
utter  sincerity,  his  scorn  of  compromise,  his  unsparing 
self-sacrifice;  but  through  these  fine  qualities  there 
now  runs  something  new — a  note  of  victory,  a  fire  of 
gladness. 

Here,  surely,  is  a  fit  instrument  in  God's  hands  for  a 
great  task.  It  is  not  merely  that  Wesley's  spirit  is  now 
a  transparent  medium  through  which  truth  shines  clear 
to  other  spirits.  It  is  a  channel  through  which  great 
forces — the  living  energies  of  the  Holy  Spirit — stream 
into  other  lives.  Wesley,  under  these  new  conditions, 
resembles  an  electric  wire  thrilling  with  subtle  and 
strange  energy.  He  has  power!  Power  other  than  that 
of  the  eloquent  tongue  or  the  logical  brain ;  power  that 
runs  back  to  eternity,  that  belongs  to  the  spiritual  order, 
and  gives  him  a  strange  mastery  over  the  souls  of  those 
who  listen  to  him. 

But  Wesley's  preaching,  if  it  produced  more  direct 
and  visible  results  than  before,  now  provoked,  curiously 
enough,  almost  more  of  active  opposition  than  ever.  His 


BEGINNING   THE   WORK  153 

disquieting  earnestness,  the  steel-like  edge  and  hardness 
of  his  speech,  had  always  been  too  severe  a  trial  for  the 
drowsy  congregations  of  that  day.  For  them  religion 
had  only  the  offices  of  an  opiate;  it  was  a  process  as 
entirely  mechanical  as  the  revolutions  of  a  Thibetan 
prayer- wheel.  But  now  the  disturbing  energy  of  Wesley's 
speech  for  hearers  who  asked  only  to  be  let  alone  was 
somehow  enormously  multiplied ;  and  the  Churches,  one 
after  another,  shut  promptly  and  almost  automatically 
against  him,  after  he  had  once  preached  in  them.  Before 
the  end  of  1738  he  was  little  better  than  an  ecclesiastical 
outcast. 

His  Journal  at  this  period  is  full  of  such  records  as 
these :  "  Preached  twice  at  St.  John's,  Clerkenwell,  so 
that  I  fear  they  will  bear  me  there  no  longer. .  .  .  Preached 
in  the  evening  to  such  congregations  as  I  never  saw  before 
at  St.  Clement's,  in  the  Strand;  as  this  is  the  first  time 
of  my  preaching  here,  I  suppose  it  will  be  the  last.  .  .  . 
I  preached  at  St.  Giles's.  .  .  .  How  was  the  power  of  God 
present  with  us !  I  am  content  to  preach  here  no  more." 
We  do  not  stop  just  now  to  analyse  the  secret  of  the 
opposition  Wesley  aroused  at  this  stage  amongst  the 
clergy  and  the  average  churchgoers.  It  is  sufficient  to 
note  the  fact  that  at  this  precise  moment,  when  he  really 
had  a  message  he  could  proclaim  with  exultant  confi- 
dence— a  message  through  whose  syllables  some  strange 
spiritual  force  ran  like  a  flame — well-nigh  all  the  church- 
doors  in  London  were  shut  with  a  loud  and  energetic 
bang  against  him ! 

As  the  Churches  refused  to  hear  him,  Wesley  betook 
himself  to  the  gaols,  and  he  found  his  most  eager  hearers, 
and  his  best  results,  amongst  the  felons  in  the  condemned 
cells.  Felons  waiting  to  be  hanged,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, sat  in  crowds — a  witness  to  the  cruelty  of  the  law  in 
those  harsh  days — in  every  English  gaol.  Charles  Wesley 
records  preaching  to  one  sad  company  of  the  condemned, 
fifty-two  in  number,  and  amongst  them  a  child  of  ten. 
Rogers,  the  poet,  as  late  as  1780,  relates  seeing  a  cart 
full  of  young  girls,  in  dresses  of  various  colours  —  the 
feminine  instinct  for  adornment  surviving  to  the  last — 
on  their  way  to  Tyburn  to  be  executed,  after  the  Gordon 
Riots.  Wesley's  work  amongst  these  hurrying  candidates 


154  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

for  the  gallows  fills  a  large  space  in  his  Journal.     Here 
is  a  typical  story — one  of  many : — 

"  On  Wednesday  my  brother  and  I  went,  at  their  desire,  to 
do  the  last  good  office  to  the  condemned  malefactors.  ...  It 
was  the  most  glorious  instance  I  ever  saw  of  faith  triumphing  over 
sin  and  death.  On  observing  the  tears  run  fast  down  the  cheeks 
of  one  of  them,  I  asked  him,  '  How  do  you  feel  your  heart  now  ? ' 
He  calmly  replied,  '  I  feel  a  peace  which  I  could  not  have  be- 
lieved to  be  possible,  and  I  know  it  is  the  peace  of  God  which 
passeth  all  understanding.' " 

In  his  Journal  it  is  almost  amusing  to  note  the  rigour 
with  which  Wesley  still  continues  to  test  himself,  and 
the  care,  not  to  say  the  eagerness,  with  which  he  collects 
and  records  all  varieties  of  spiritual  experience  which 
he  sees.  He  writes  to  many  persons  who  have  come 
under  his  influence,  asking  them  to  describe  the  effects 
religion  produces  in  them;  and  Wesley,  himself  the 
frankest  of  men,  had  some  secret  charm  which  awakened 
frankness  in  others.  As  a  result,  his  Journal  is  packed 
with  human  documents  which,  when  read  even  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  afterwards,  affect  the  reader  with  a  curious 
sense  of  reality  and  honesty. 

It  was  no  vulgar  and  peeping  curiosity  which  made 
Wesley  seek  and  write  down  these  stories.  The  truth 
is  that  no  one  ever  looked  at  religion  in  a  more  scientific 
way,  or  tried  it  more  absolutely  by  scientific  methods, 
than  did  Wesley.  For  him  it  was  not  a  theology  to  be 
recited,  a  history  to  be  learned,  a  philosophy  to  be  in- 
terpreted, or  even  a  code  of  external  ethics  to  be  obeyed ; 
it  was  a  divine  force  entering  human  life,  and  undertaking 
to  produce  certain  results  in  human  character  and  experi- 
ence. And  Wesley  was  always  testing  it,  in  himself  or 
in  others,  by  the  question,  "  Does  it,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
produce  the  results  it  claims  to  yield  ? " 

"  Experience  first,  inference  second.  This,"  says  Huxley, 
"  is  the  order  of  science."  And  Wesley's  attitude  towards 
his  own  work  is,  in  Huxley's  sense,  completely  scientific. 
He  resembles  a  chemist  who  is  trying  some  new  com- 
bination. He  must  watch,  note,  verify  the  results,  in  terms 
of  human  experience,  which  this  combination  produces. 

Meanwhile,  the  three  men  who  were  to  be  henceforth 


BEGINNING   THE    WORK  155 

linked  in  a  memorable  partnership  of  Christian  service 
found  themselves  together  in  London.  Wesley  landed 
from  Germany  on  September  16,  1738 ;  Whitefield  re- 
turned from  a  brief  visit  to  America  in  December; 
Charles  Wesley  was  acting  as  curate  at  Islington.  Thus, 
at  the  beginning  of  1739,  the  three  comrades,  for  the 
first  time  since  the  Holy  Club  at  Oxford  broke  up,  found 
themselves  side  by  side  again.  They  were  young  men 
with  no  ecclesiastical  position,  and  no  sense  as  yet  of 
the  great  career  they  were  to  pursue  in  common.  But 
all  three  had,  somehow,  relearned  the  lost  secret  of 
Christianity.  Something  of  its  early  power  had  fallen 
upon  them.  A  gleam  of  the  fiery  tongues  of  Pentecost 
was  in  their  speech ;  a  breath  of  its  mighty  rushing  wind 
was  in  their  lives. 

The  evidence  of  that  strange  power  is  found  abundantly 
in  each  of  the  three.  Charles  Wesley,  during  his  brother's 
absence  in  Germany,  did  amazing  work  in  the  condemned 
cells  of  the  prisons,  and  amongst  the  social  wrecks  of 
the  workhouses  of  London.  Crowds  gathered  round 
Whitefield  whenever  he  stepped  into  a  pulpit.  In  the 
little  societies  already  hi  existence  the  presence  of  the 
three  was  a  sort  of  embodied  flame,  and  remarkable 
meetings  were  held.  Sometimes  whole  nights  were  spent 
in  prayer. 

"On  the  first  night  of  1739,"  says  Wesley  himself,  "Mr.  Hall, 
Kinchin,  Ingham,  Whitefield,  Hutchins,  and  my  brother  Charles, 
were  present  at  our  love-feast,  with  about  sixty  of  our  brethren. 
About  three  in  the  morning,  as  we  were  continuing  instant  in 
prayer,  the  power  of  God  came  mightily  amongst  us,  insomuch 
that  many  cried  out  for  exceeding  joy,  and  many  fell  to  the 
ground.  As  soon  as  we  were  recovered  a  little  from  that  awe  and 
amazement  at  the  presence  of  His  majesty,  we  broke  out  with  one 
voice,  '  We  praise  Thee,  O  God ;  we  acknowledge  Thee  to  be  the 
Lord ! ' " 

Such  meetings,  of  course,  shocked  the  drowsy  sense 
of  propriety  in  the  average  clergyman.  The  preaching 
of  the  three  comrades  might  incidentally  yield  results 
of  a  praiseworthy  sort.  It  had  to  be  confessed  that 
they  made  thieves  honest,  drunkards  sober,  wife-beaters 
gentle.  They  lit  human  faces  with  the  glow  of  a  strange 


156  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

joy,  and  sent  even  condemned  men  to  the  gallows  with 
hymns  on  their  lips.  But  their  work  had  one  fatal 
vice,  the  worst  that  age  knew — it  was  irregular !  It  was 
tainted  with  that  dreaded,  hated,  and  most  dangerous 
thing,  enthusiasm!  Even  Southey,  telling  the  story  a 
hundred  years  afterwards,  cannot  quite  forgive  the 
Wesleys  for  saving  men  and  women  in  an  unconventional 
fashion;  and  Coleridge  breaks  upon  his  text  with  one 
of  his  amusing  footnotes : — 

"  O  dear  and  honoured  Southey !  this  is  the  favourite  of  my 
library  among  many  favourites ;  this  is  the  book  which  I  can  read 
for  the  twentieth  time  with  delight,  when  I  can  read  nothing 
else  at  all.  .  .  .  This  darling  book  is  nevertheless  an  unsafe  book 
for  all  of  unsettled  minds.  The  same  facts  and  incidents  as 
those  recorded  in  Scripture,  and  told  in  the  same  words — and 
the  workers,  alas  !  in  the  next  page — these  are  '  enthusiasts,' 
'fanatics.'" 

The  incidents  of  the  first  chapters  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  re-emerging  in  actual  life  after  eighteen  centuries 
— this  was,  indeed,  for  many  good  people  an  alarming,  not 
to  say  a  shocking,  spectacle.  How  many  there  are  still 
who  can  tolerate  spiritual  phenomena  only  as  long  as 
they  are  safely  locked  up  between  the  covers  of  the  Bible, 
and  at  a  distance  of  centuries ! 

The  two  Wesleys,  who  had  no  disquieting  dream  of 
separation  from  the  Church,  and  were  anxious  for  nothing 
more  than  the  approval  of  their  spiritual  superiors,  waited 
on  the  Bishop  of  London  to  explain  and  justify  their 
methods.  Gibson  was  a  diplomatist,  an  antiquarian,  a 
man  of  affairs;  but  anything  more  remote  than  his 
temper  from  the  fiery  zeal  of  the  reformer,  the  consum- 
ing ardour  of  the  evangelist,  can  hardly  be  imagined. 
He  looked  with  perplexed  eyes  at  the  two  brothers. 
The  brown  of  American  suns  was  as  yet  upon  their 
faces ;  but  they  were  scholars,  gentlemen,  university  men. 
The  pity  was  that  some  strange  fire  of  zeal  burned  fiercely 
in  them.  There  was  no  touch  of  the  dissenter  about 
them.  They  had  no  quarrel  with  the  Articles  or  the 
ritual  of  the  Church.  The  disquieting  thing  was  that 
they  took  these  too  literally. 

They  discussed  with  tneir  Bishop,  for  example,  the 


BEGINNING   THE   WORK  157 

propriety,  nay,  the  necessity,  of  re-baptizing  Dissenters. 
"Sure  and  unsure,"  Charles  Wesley  argued,  "were  not 
the  same " ;  and  where  the  fate  of  eternal  souls  was  at 
stake  no  risks  ought  to  be  taken.  But  Bishop  Gibson 
was  anxious  only  to  leave  the  Dissenters  alone,  no  matter 
how  inconsistent  with  the  High  Church  theory  that 
policy  might  be.  Charles  Wesley  waited  upon  Gibson 
later  to  notify  that  he  intended  to  perform  such-  a 
baptism. 

"  '  It  is  irregular,'  said  the  Bishop ;  '  I  never  receive  any  such 
information  but  from  the  minister.' 

" '  My  lord,  the  Rubric  does  not  so  much  as  require  the  minister 
to  give  you  notice,  but  "  any  discreet  person."  I  have  the  minister's 
leave.' 

" '  Who  gave  you  authority  to  baptize  ? ' 

" '  Your  lordship,'  replied  Charles  (for  he  had  been  ordained 
priest  by  him),  '  and  I  shall  exercise  it  in  any  part  of  the  known 
world.' 

"  '  Are  you  a  licensed  curate  ? '  said  the  Bishop.  '  Do  you  not 
know  that  no  man  can  exercise  parochial  duty  in  London  without 
my  leave  ?  It  is  only  sub  silentio.' 

"  '  But  you  know  many  do  take  that  permission  for  authority, 
and  you  yourself  allow  it.' 

"  '  It  is  one  thing  to  connive,'  said  the  Bishop,  '  and  another  to 
approve.  I  have  power  to  inhibit  you.' 

"  '  Does  your  lordship  exert  that  power?'  asked  Charles,  all  the 
Wesley  in  him  hardening  into  stubbornness  at  a  threat  'Do 
you  now  inhibit  me1?' 

"'Oh,  why  will  you  push  matters  to  an  extreme?'  cried  the 
perplexed  Bishop." 

Plainly  troublesome  young  men  these,  who  refused  to 
dilute  religion  into  platitudes,  or  button  it  up  in  polite 
conventions ! 

Of  the  three  comrades,  the  Wesleys — perhaps  because 
they  were  older  and  better  known — were  regarded  with 
more  suspicion.  All  official  brows  frowned  upon  them. 
Their  opportunities  of  preaching  steadily  narrowed.  The 
Church  at  best  was  a  hard  stepmother  to  the  brothers. 
John  Wesley  was  his  father's  curate  for  three  years,  the 
sole  ecclesiastical  charge,  in  England,  he  ever  held.  Charles 
held,  without  a  title,  a  curacy  at  Islington  for  about  as  many 
months,  and  was  driven  from  it  practically  by  violence. 


158  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

This  was  the  only  preferment  the  Anglican  Church  had  to 
offer  two  of  its  sons  who  represented  the  greatest  religious 
force  that  has  stirred  in  Protestant  England. 

It  is  usual  to  say  that  the  startling  physical  manifesta- 
tions which  attended  the  early  preaching  of  the  Wesleys 
explain,  and  justify,  the  general  shutting  of  all  pulpits 
against  them ;  but  the  mere  dates  in  the  almanac  wreck 
that  theory.  In  the  spring  of  1739  only  one  instance 
of  the  physical  manifestations,  afterwards  so  remarkable 
a  result  of  Wesley's  preaching,  had  occurred,  and  already 
the  Church  had  closed  her  doors  upon  her  enthusiastic 
son  for  ever.  Southey  finds  justification  for  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  Wesleys  in  the  love-feasts  and  watch-night 
services  held  by  the  little  Moravian  societies,  in  which 
the  Wesleys  joined.  We  have  described  one  such  meet- 
ing which  lasted  till  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
was  swept  by  a  wave  of  remarkable  spiritual  influence. 
"Such  a  meeting,"  said  Southey,  "set  prudence  at  de- 
fiance. It  was  an  example  of  that  excessive  devotion 
which  gave  just  offence  to  the  better  part  of  the  clergy. 
Such  excessive  devotion,"  he  adds,  "if  it  find  a  mind 
sane,  is  not  likely  to  leave  it  so."  Coleridge,  with  a  flash 
of  keener  insight,  traces  the  opposition  of  the  clergy  to 
the  new  movement  to  what  he  calls  "the  subtle  poison 
of  the  easy-chair." 

To  such  a  spiritual  mood  "prudence"  seems  the  first 
of  virtues,  and  zeal  the  last  and  worst  of  offences.  The 
Wesleys  disquieted  the  conscience  of  the  clergy  of  their 
day  by  their  uncomfortable  earnestness.  They  were  "  en- 
thusiasts." This  was  but  a  polite  way  of  saying  they  were 
dangerous  lunatics.  So  in  mere  self-defence  there  was 
an  unconscious  conspiracy  to  suppress  them.  But  it 
remains,  after  all  explanations,  the  scandal  of  the  Church 
of  that  day,  the  final  and  overwhelming  proof  of  its 
blindness,  that  it  shut  its  doors  against  the  Wesleys. 

But  Whitefield  was  the  youngest  of  the  group;  he 
had  as  yet  provoked  less  criticism  than  his  comrades. 
His  matchless  preaching  powers  gave  him  a  strange 
popularity;  and  so,  in  the  order  of  God's  providence,  it 
fell  to  him  to  break  through  the  narrow  limits  of 
mechanical  Church  order  and  make  a  way  for  the  new 
forces  beginning  to  stir  in  the  religious  life  of  England. 


BEGINNING   THE   WORK  159 

There  is  something  almost  amusing  in  the  slowly 
awakening  suspicion  of  the  London  clergy  towards 
Whitetield.  Here  was  a  strange  clerical  phenomenon, 
a  preacher  who  used  words  of  fire  in  the  pulpit;  who 
wept  over  his  hearers  in  a  passion  of  pity,  and  somehow 
set  their  tears  running  too.  It  was  plain  that  no  starched 
conventionalities  would  long  restrain  a  divine  at  once 
so  youthful  and  so  ardent.  No  one  knew  quite  what  he 
would  do  next.  He  was  preaching  in  Bermondsey  Church 
to  a  great  crowd,  while  a  still  vaster  crowd  filled  the 
churchyard  outside,  unable  to  find  admittance.  Why, 
asked  Whitefield,  should  he  not  go  out,  turn  a  tombstone 
into  a  pulpit  and  preach  to  that  great  multitude  eagerly 
waiting  to  listen?  The  spectacle  of  that  dumb  waiting 
crowd  in  Bermondsey  churchyard,  he  said  afterwards, 
"  put  me  first  upon  thinking  of  preaching  without  doors. 
I  mentioned  it  to  some  friends,  who  looked  upon  it  as 
a  mad  notion.  However,  we  knelt  down  and  prayed  that 
nothing  may  be  done  rashly." 

At  St.  Margaret's,  Westminster,  one  Sunday  morning 
Whitefield  was  practically  pushed  into  the  pulpit,  and 
preached  against  the  protest  of  the  officials,  and  to  the 
scandal  of  all  ecclesiastical  sensibilities.  A  few  days  later 
he  went  to  Bristol,  but  by  this  time  the  clergy  generally 
had  taken  alarm.  The  chancellor  of  the  diocese  sent  for 
him,  and  asked  him  by  what  authority  he  preached  in 
the  diocese  of  Bristol  without  a  licence,  and  read  to  him 
those  canons  which  forbade  any  minister  from  preaching 
in  a  private  house.  Whitefield  contended  these  did  not 
apply  to  ministers  of  the  Church  of  England.  When  he 
was  informed  of  his  mistake,  he  said : — 

"  There  is  also  a  canon,  sir,  forbidding  all  clergymen  to 
frequent  taverns  and  play  at  cards;  why  is  not  that  put 
in  execution  ? "  Then  he  added  what,  to  the  shuddering 
chancellor,  seemed  the  worst  of  blasphemies.  There  were 
things — the  souls  of  men,  for  example — which  this  highly 
irregular  young  curate  counted  of  more  value  than  even 
the  most  venerable  canons.  At  all  risks  he  must  preach 
to  lost  men  wherever  he  found  them.  "  Notwithstanding 
the  canons,"  he  said,  "  he  could  not  but  speak  the  things 
which  he  knew." 

The  answer  was  solemnly  written  down,  and  the  chan- 


160  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

cellor  then  said  grimly :  "  I  am  resolved,  sir,  if  you  preach 
or  expound  anywhere  in  this  diocese,  I  will  first  suspend, 
and  then  excommunicate,  you."  They  parted  at  this 
point ;  and  Whitefield  goes  on  to  tell  how  "  after  I  had 
joined  in  prayer  for  the  chancellor,"  he  conducted  a  service 
in  St.  Nicholas  Street  with  signal  power.  "  It  is  remark- 
able," he  adds,  "  that  we  have  not  had  such  a  continued 
presence  of  God  amongst  us  as  since  I  was  threatened 
to  be  excommunicated." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   FIELD-PREACHING 

Now  an  attempt  to  put  an  ecclesiastical  muzzle  on 
Whitefield  was  predoomed  to  failure.  Whitefield,  it  is 
true,  was  only  twenty-five  years  of  age,  a  newly-ordained 
curate,  without  a  charge  and  without  influence.  The 
chancellor  of  a  diocese,  with  frowning  official  brows  and 
the  threat  of  excommunication  on  his  lips,  was  a  figure 
of  sufficiently  awe-inspiring  quality.  The  ordinary  curate 
would  have  been  extinguished  by  the  vision !  But  White- 
field  was  a  curate  of  quite  unconventional  qualities.  A 
spirit  so  daring  as  his  was  not  to  be  chilled  by  the  frown 
of  even  episcopal  brows;  a  zeal  so  flame-like  could  not 
be  restrained  by  even  the  menace  of  lawn  sleeves !  At 
that  precise  moment,  too,  Whitefield  found  himself  in 
the  presence  of  what  seemed  an  urgent  and  overwhelm- 
ing call  to  preach.  Here  were  the  Kingswood  miners,  a 
community  ignorant,  vicious,  forgotten,  who,  beyond  all 
others,  needed  the  care  and  teaching  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  yet  were  left  completely  outside,  not  merely 
of  its  agencies,  but  even  of  its  very  remembrance.  When 
Whitefield  was  setting  out  for  America  some  wise  and 
keen-sighted  friend  said  to  him,  "  If  you  have  a  mind  to 
convert  Indians,  there  are  colliers  enough  in  Kingswood." 
How  could  one  of  Christ's  ministers — one,  too,  of  White- 
field's  gifts  and  temperament,  with  the  consciousness  both 
of  a  divine  message  and  of  a  divine  power  to  utter  that 
message — stand  before  such  a  crowd  and  consent  to  be 
dumb  ?  The  silent,  sunless  faces  were  a  call  too  urgent 
to  be  denied. 

The  churches  could  find  no  room  for  Whitefield,  and 
on  Saturday  afternoon,  February  17,  1739,  he  took  his 
stand  on  a  little  rising  ground  outside  Bristol,  called 
Rose-green,  and  preached  his  first  open-air  sermon.  There 
was  a  congregation  of  only  some  two  hundred  staring, 

161  T 


162  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

open-mouthed  listeners.  Here  was  a  strange  spectacle, 
a  clergyman  in  bands  and  gown,  with  a  voice  that  had 
in  it  a  note  of  thunder,  preaching  a  sermon  at  the  road- 
side. "  I  thought,"  says  Whitefield,  in  his  magnificent 
way,  "  I  might  be  doing  the  service  of  my  Creator,  who 
had  a  mountain  for  His  pulpit  and  the  heavens  for  a 
sounding-board." 

It  was  just  five  months  since  John  Wesley  landed  on 
his  return  from  Germany.  They  had  been  months  of 
waiting,  of  uncertainty,  of  discouragement,  of  apparently 
narrowing  opportunities  for  work.  The  doors  of  all  the 
churches  were  being  shut  one  after  another  against  Wesley 
and  his  comrades.  It  seemed  as  if  England  had  no  place 
for  them,  and  could  offer  them  no  career .  Those  five 
months  constitute  a  dramatic  pause  on  the  threshold  of 
a  great  work.  Then  Whitefield,  first  of  the  three  im- 
mortal comrades,  broke  through  the  imprisoning  lines 
of  conventional  usage  and  of  ecclesiastical  law,  and 
preached  in  the  open  air.  With  that  act  he  stepped  into 
a  freer,  larger  world,  and  from  that  moment  the  new 
spiritual  forces  beginning  to  stir  in  England  found — or 
rather  made  for  themselves — a  free  channel. 

The  open-air  services  begun  by  Whitefield  were  attended, 
almost  instantly,  with  startling  results.  His  first  audience 
numbered  200,  the  second  ros"e  to  3000,  the  third  to 
5000,  and  the  crowds  swiftly  extended  to  vast  gatherings 
of  20,000  people.  Whitefield  looked  on  the  far-stretching 
mosaic  of  upturned  countenances,  black  with  the  coal- 
dust  of  the  pits,  and  tells  in  unforgettable  words  how, 
while  he  preached,  he  saw  the  white  streaks  made  by  the 
tears  running  down  those  grimy  faces.  "  The  open  firma- 
ment above  me,"  he  afterwards  wrote,  "the  prospect  of 
the  adjacent  fields,  with  the  sight  of  thousands  and 
thousands,  some  in  coaches,  some  on  horseback,  and 
some  in  the  trees,  and  at  times  all  affected  and  drenched 
in  tears  together,  to  which  sometimes  was  added  the 
solemnity  of  the  approaching  evening,  was  almost  too 
much  for  and  quite  overcame  me."  "Blessed,"  he  adds, 
"  are  the  eyes  which  see  the  things  we  see." 

The  ecclesiastical  authorities,  of  course,  found  fresh 
argument  for  a  quarrel  in  these  services.  They  were  a 
new  and  yet  more  alarming  expression  of  "enthusiasm." 


THE   FIELD-PREACHING  163 

The  wrong  thing  was  being  done,  in  the  wrong  place,  and 
in  the  wrong  way.  It  is  an  amusing  illustration  of  the 
frost-bitten  formalism  of  that  day  to  find  so  sensible  a 
man  as  Samuel  Wesley  overcome  with  horror  by  the 
circumstance  that  Whitefield  "  never  read  the  Liturgy 
to  his  tatterdemalions  on  the  common ! " 

But  if  the  services  shocked  the  clerical  conscience 
they  stirred  the  heart  of  the  common  people.  The 
affection  Whitefield  won  from  his  hearers  was  childlike 
and  touching.  They  hung  on  his  words ;  they  blessed 
him  as  he  passed  by  them  on  the  road ;  they  gave  him 
of  their  scanty  earnings  for  that  far-off  orphan-house  on 
American  soil  which  already  Whitefield  was  contem- 
plating. They  followed  him  with  tears  when  he  left 
them.  These  open-air  services  resembled  the  tapping 
of  an  artesian  well.  The  dark,  sunless,  forgotten  waters 
rushed  up  to  the  light. 

But  Whitefield  had  to  sail  for  Georgia,  and  he  sum- 
moned Wesley  to  leave  London  and  come  to  Bristol  to 
take  up  the  strange  work  begun  there.  In  the  little 
society  in  Fetter  Lane  that  call  was  heard  with  dread. 
Some  dim  sense  of  great  issues  hanging  upon  the  answer 
to  it  disquieted  the  minds  of  the  little  company.  The 
Bible  was  consulted  by  lot,  and  repeatedly,  in  search  of  a 
text  which  might  be  accepted  as  a  decision.  But  only 
the  most  alarming  passages  emerged.  "  Get  thee  up  into 
this  mountain  and  die  on  the  mount  whither  thou  goest 
up,  and  be  gathered  to  thy  people,"  ran  one.  When  one 
chance-selected  text  proved  disquieting  in  this  fashion  the 
lot  was  cast  again  and  yet  again,  but  always  with  the 
same  result.  There  was  a  quaint  mixture  of  superstition 
and  simplicity  in  the  Bibliomancy  of  the  early  Methodists. 
If  the  text  which  presented  itself  did  not  please  it  was  re- 
jected, and  the  sacred  pages  were  interrogated  by  chance 
afresh,  in  the  hope  of  more  welcome  results. 

Wesley  at  last  decided  to  go,  but  even  in  his  ears  the 
call  to  Bristol  seemed  a  summons  to  the  grave.  Yet  his 
purpose  was  unshaken,  and  that  step  decided  the  whole 
character  of  his  after  work. 

He  reached  Bristol  and  stood  beside  Whitefield  while 
he  preached  in  the  open  air.  Wesley  looked  with  amazed 
eyes  and  gravely  pondering  brow  on  the  strange  and  vast 


164  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

congregation  assembled.  Then,  on  the  morrow,  in  his 
own  words,  "I  submitted  to  be  more  vile  and,  standing 
on  a  little  grassy  mound,  preached  to  a  great  crowd  from 
the  words,  '  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because 
He  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  poor.' " 

Whitefield  preached  his  first  open-air  sermon  on 
February  17,  1739;  six  weeks  later,  on  April  2,  John 
Wesley  held  his  first  open-air  service,  and  Charles  Wesley 
followed  the  example  of  his  comrades  still  later,  on 
June  24.  In  his  case,  too,  he  was  driven  from  the 
churches  into  the  fields.  The  ecclesiastical  authorities 
had  grown  sternly  hostile.  Charles  Wesley  was  acting  as 
curate,  but  without  a  licence,  and  preached  repeatedly  in 
Bexley  Church;  and  the  irregular  vicar  and  still  more 
irregular  curate  were  summoned,  on  June  19,  to  appear 
before  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Charles  Wesley 
in  his  Journal  says : — 

"  His  Grace  expressly  forbade  him  to  let  any  of  us  preach  in  his 
church,  and  charged  us  with  breach  of  the  canon.  I  mentioned  the 
Bishop  of  London's  authorising  my  forcible  exclusion.  He  would  not 
hear  me  ;  said  he  did  not  dispute.  He  asked  me  what  call  I  had. 
I  answered,  'A  dispensation  of  the  Gospel  is  committed  to  me.' 

" '  That  is,  to  St.  Paul ;  but  I  do  not  dispute,  and  will  not  pro- 
ceed to  excommunication  yet.' 

" '  Your  Grace  has  taught  me,  in  your  book  on  Church  govern- 
ment, that  a  man  unjustly  excommunicated  is  not  thereby  cut  off 
from  communication  with  Christ.' 

"  '  Of  that,'  he  replied  '  I  am  the  judge.' 

"  I  asked  him  if  Mr.  Whitefield's  success  was  not  a  spiritual 
sign,  and  sufficient  proof  of  his  call ;  and  recommended  Gamaliel's 
advice.  He  dismissed  us ;  Piers,  with  kind  professions ;  me  with 
all  the  marks  of  his  displeasure." 

This  was  on  the  Thursday.  Whitefield  urged  him  to 
preach  in  the  open  air  on  the  following  Sunday.  "  If  I 
do  this,"  writes  Charles  Wesley  in  perplexed  meditation, 
"  I  shall  break  down  the  breach  and  become  desperate." 
He  decided,  however,  at  last,  and  he  tells  in  his  Journal 
the  story  of  that  fateful  Sunday. 

"  Siwday,  June  24,  St.  John  Baptist's  Day. — The  first  Scripture 
I  cast  my  eye  upon  was,  '  Then  came  the  servant  to  Him  and  said, 
Master,  what  shall  we  do  ? '  I  prayed  with  West  and  went  forth 


THE    FIELD-PREACHING  165 

in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ.  I  found  near  ten  thousand  helpless 
sinners  waiting  for  the  word  in  Moorfields.  I  invited  them  in 
my  Master's  words,  as  well  as  name,  '  Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  that 
labour  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.'  The  Lord 
was  with  me,  even  me,  His  meanest  messenger,  according  to  His 
promise.  At  St.  Paul's  the  psalms,  lessons,  &c.,  for  the  day  put 
fresh  life  into  me.  So  did  the  Sacrament.  My  load  was  gone, 
and  all  my  doubts  and  scruples.  God  shone  upon  my  path,  and 
I  knew  this  was  His  will  concerning  me." 

Archbishop  Potter  threatened  to  excommunicate  Charles 
Wesley  for  preaching  at  Moorfields  and  Kennington  Com- 
mon, and  the  laity,  too,  shared  the  prejudices  of  the 
clergy.  One  surly  landowner  served  Charles  Wesley  with 
a  writ  for  walking  over  his  field  to  address  the  crowd. 
Proceedings  were  settled  by  the  payment  of  .£10,  and 
the  bill  still  survives  as  an  historical  record.  It  runs : — 

"Goter  versus  Westley.  Damages,  ^10  ;  costs  taxed,  £9,  i6s. 
8d.  July  29,  1739,  Received  of  Mr.  Westley,  by  the  hands  of 
Mr.  Joseph  Varding,  nineteen  pounds  sixteen  shillings  and  six- 
pence, for  damages  and  costs  in  their  cause. 

"  WILLIAM  GASON,  Attorney  for  the  Plaintiff." 

At  the  bottom  of  this  instrument  Charles  Wesley  has 
written,  "  I  paid  them  the  things  I  never  took,"  and  on 
the  back  the  significant  sentence,  "To  be  rejudged  on 
that  day." 

It  is  almost  amusing  to  notice  the  air — as  of  men 
stepping  off  the  solid  earth  into  mere  space,  or  of  adven- 
turers beginning  a  revolution — with  which  Whitefield  and 
the  Wesleys,  in  turn,  began  open-air  preaching.  What 
was  there  so  alarming  in  preaching  a  sermon  under  the 
open  sky,  with  the  green  turf  for  a  floor,  and  the  wide 
heavens  for  a  sounding-board  ?  As  Wesley  himself 
reflected,  there  are  excellent  precedents  for  open-air 
preaching  in  the  New  Testament.  Yet  he  tells  us,  as  he 
watched  Whitefield  preaching  to  the  Kingswood  colliers, 
how  deeply  the  sight  shocked  him.  "  All  my  life  till 
very  lately,"  he  says,  "  I  have  been  so  tenacious  of  every 
point  relating  to  ;  decency  and  order  that  I  should  have 
thought  the  saving  of  souls  almost  a  sin  if  it  had  not 
been  done  in  a  church."  Whitefield  himself  writes,  on 


166  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

April  3  :  "  Yesterday  I  began  to  play  the  madman  in 
Gloucester  by  preaching  on  a  table  in  Thornbury  Street." 
Yet  both  John  and  Charles  Wesley  preached  often  in 
the  open-air  on  the  river  bank,  or  under  the  shade  of  a 
great  tree  in  Georgia,  and  this  without  a  sense  of  doing 
anything  of  doubtful  propriety.  What  was  it  made  an 
open-air  service  in  England  so  alarming  ? 

They  were  unconsciously  influenced  by  their  environ- 
ment. In  convention-oppressed  England,  upon  which 
mere  decorous  use  and  wont  lay  hard  and  deep  as  a  frost, 
to  preach  outside  a  pulpit,  or  anywhere  except  under  a 
church  roof,  was  little  less  than  impiety.  It  was  charged 
with  the  most  deadly  risks.  Religion  had  to  be  kept 
under  a  glass  shade  and  packed  in  cotton-wool.  To  take 
it  into  the  jostling  street,  to  expose  it  to  the  rough  winds 
that  blew  on  the  hill-side  or  across  the  open  moor,  was  to 
imperil  its  very  existence ! 

England,  too,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  a  mere 
network  of  ecclesiastical  parishes,  and  each  parish  was 
a  spiritual  freehold,  with  jealously-guarded  boundaries. 
These  new  preachers  were  mere  trespassers !  They  were 
trespassers,  too,  of  a  very  disquieting  quality.  To  the 
drowsy  divines  of  that  period,  the  spectacle  of  clergymen 
betaking  themselves  to  the  market-place,  or  to  the  village 
green,  in  search  of  a  congregation  was  nothing  less  than 
alarming.  And  the  vastness  of  the  congregations  they 
drew,  the  depth  of  the  feelings  they  aroused,  made  the 
spectacle  only  more  alarming  in  clerical  eyes.  These  men 
were  kindling  a  conflagration ! 

To  Wesley  and  his  comrades  themselves  the  business  of 
field  preaching  was  at  first,  as  we  have  seen,  utterly  dis- 
tasteful. John  Wesley  says  he  "consented  to  become 
more  vile "  when  he  preached  on  the  hillside  at  Kings- 
wood.  All  the  sensibilities  of  the  strait-laced,  order- 
loving  High  Churchman  were  shocked,  in  a  word,  by  the 
experience  of  having  to  stand  on  common  earth,  while 
the  wind  blew  on  his  bare  head,  and  preach  to  a  passing 
crowd.  But  Wesley,  after  his  logical  fashion,  made  up  his 
mind  once  for  all  on  this  subject,  and  his  conscience 
obeyed  his  logic.  He  was  but  following  a  great  and  sacred 
precedent  in  consenting  in  this  fashion  to  become  "  a  fool 
for  Christ's  sake."  He  puts  the  case  with  matchless  force 


THE    FIELD-PREACHING  167 

in  a  letter  to  a  friend  who  warned  him  against   these 
vagrant  and  unauthorised  services : — 

"On  Scriptural  principles,  I  do  not  think  it  hard  to  justify 
what  I  do.  God  in  Scripture  commands  me,  according  to  my 
power,  to  instruct  the  ignorant,  reform  the  wicked,  confirm  the 
virtuous.  Man  forbids  me  to  do  this  in  another's  parish,  that 
is,  in  effect,  to  do  it  at  all,  seeing  I  have  now  no  parish  of  my  own, 
nor  probably  ever  shall.  Whom,  then,  shall  I  hear,  God  or  man  1 
'  If  it  be  just  to  obey  man  rather  than  God,  judge  you.  A  dis- 
pensation of  the  Gospel  is  committed  to  me,  and  woe  is  me  if  I 
preach  not  the  Gospel.'  But  where  shall  I  preach  it  upon  the 
principles  you  mention?  Why  not  in  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  or 
America ;  not  in  any  of  these  Christian  parts,  at  least,  of  the  habit- 
able earth.  For  all  these  are,  after  a  sort,  divided  into  parishes. 
If  it  be  said,  '  Go  back,  then,  to  the  heathens  from  whence  you 
came ' — nay,  but  neither  could  I  now  (on  your  principles)  preach 
to  them,  for  all  the  heathens  in  Georgia  belong  to  the  parish  either 
of  Savannah  or  Frederica. 

"Suffer  me  now  to  tell  you  my  principles  in  this  matter.  I 
look  upon  all  the  world  as  my  parish,  thus  far,  I  mean,  that  in 
whatever  part  of  it  I  am  I  judge  it  meet,  right,  and  my  bounden 
duty  to  declare  unto  all  that  are  willing  to  hear  the  glad  tidings 
of  salvation.  This  is  the  work  which  I  know  God  has  called  me 
to  do ;  and  sure  I  am  that  His  blessing  attends  it." l 

Its  early  field-preaching  best  expresses  the  essential 
genius  of  Methodism.  It  makes  audible  what  may  be 
called  the  imperial  note  in  it;  it  makes  visible,  too,  its 
passion  of  zeal  to  save  lost  men  and  women.  There  was 
in  the  Church  life  of  that  day  little  of  the  militant  spirit. 
Still  less  was  there  any  representation  of  that  divmest 
element  of  Christianity,  the  pity  that  seeks  the  lost,  seeks 
them  with  passion  and  sorrow;  seeks  with  scorn  of 
suffering  and  difficulty  and  of  mere  convention.  All  the 
terms  of  Christ's  great  parable  were  in  those  sad  days — as 
too  often  hi  all  days — inverted  in  Christ's  own  Church. 
The  ninety-nine  sheep  were  lost  in  the  wilderness,  there 
was  only  one  fat,  well-wooled  sheep  in  the  fold.  And 
beside  that  one  comfortable  sheep  the  equally  fat  and 
drowsy  shepherd  slumbered,  and  left  the  ninety-nine  in 
the  wilderness  to  seek  him !  The  wandering  sheep,  that 
is,  must  pursue  the  shepherd,  and  not  the  shepherd  the 

1  Journal,  June  ti,  1739. 


168  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

sheep !  But  when  Whitefield  and  the  Wesleys,  with  a 
thousand  locked  church  doors  behind  them,  stood  before 
a  crowd  of  unwashed  miners  at  Kingswood,  or  a  ragged 
multitude  from  the  London  slums  at  Moorfields,  and  pro- 
claimed the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  then  faith  came  out 
from  behind  its  defences.  The  drowsy,  slippered,  arm- 
chair religion  of  the  day  became  aggressive.  It  attacked, 
instead  of  waiting  to  be  attacked.  Open-air  preaching  in 
these  modern  days  has  itself  become  almost  a  convention, 
but  in  1739  it  was  a  revolution ! 


CHAPTEE  IV 

THE   THREE   GREAT    COMRADES 

HERE,  at  the  threshold  of  the  revival,  it  is  worth  while 
to  sketch  the  three  great  comrades  who  were  the  chief 
human  forces  in  its  development.  At  the  outset  it  is 
not  Wesley  but  Whitefield  who  is  most  conspicuous.  He 
leads  the  way  in  the  new  path ;  he  fills  the  largest  space 
in  the  public  eye.  The  Church  doors  are  shutting  re- 
lentlessly against  Wesley.  His  field  seems  narrowing  to 
the  condemned  cells  where  felons  sat  in  the  shadow  of  the 
gallows,  and  to  the  little  societies  which,  on  the  inspira- 
tion of  Peter  Bohler,  had  been  formed.  But  Whitefield  is 
in  the  rich  dawn  of  his  fame  as  a  preacher.  Orthodox 
pulpits  are  still  open  to  him.  Charmed  crowds  hang  on 
the  magic  of  his  eloquence.  Whole  cities  stir  at  his 
coming.  When  he  visited  Bristol  a  second  time  crowds 
on  foot,  in  coaches,  or  on  horseback  came  out  to  meet  him 
on  the  road.  The  people  blessed  him  as  he  passed  along 
the  streets.  In  the  church  where  he  preached  eager 
hearers  clung  to  the  rails  of  the  organ  loft,  others  climbed 
up  on  the  leads  of  the  very  roof  to  catch  the  vibration  of 
his  matchless  voice. 

"  In  the  early  stages  of  any  movement,"  Miss  Wedg- 
wood says,  with  a  touch  of  genuine  insight,  "  it  is  impulse 
and  not  weight  that  has  most  effect."  And  Whitefield,  by 
a  rare  combination  of  natural  gifts  and  of  spiritual  fervour, 
was  exactly  fitted  to  communicate  impulse  to  the  revival 
beginning  to  stir  in  English  life. 

Whitetield  and  Wesley,  of  course,  represent  very  unlike 
types,  and  were  products  of  unlike  forces.  Wnitetield 
lacked  Wesley's  sure  logic,  his  faculty  for  government,  his 
passion  for  order  and  method.  Wesley  had  the  graver, 
deeper,  stronger  nature.  He  was  slower  in  attainment, 
but  more  resolute  in  grasp.  Whitefield  was  swifter,  more 

169 


170  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

ardent  and  impulsive:  but  he  possessed  as  profound  a 
genius  for  religion  as  Wesley  himself.  He  lived,  more- 
over, in  a  realm  of  spiritual  ardours  unknown  to  Wesley. 
It  may  be  added  that  he  had  the  supreme  gift  of  the  orator 
in  a  form  to  which  Wesley  could  not  pretend.  And  the 
union  of  two  such  men,  with  gifts  so  diverse,  helps  to 
explain  the  great  religious  movement  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

The  contrasts  and  the  agreements  of  the  two  men  are 
alike  remarkable.  Wesley  was  nurtured  in  the  gravities 
of  a  parsonage  and  passed  straight  from  the  shelter  of 
the  rectory  roof  to  a  great  public  school,  and  then  to  an 
ancient  University.  Whitefield  was  the  son  of  an  inn- 
keeper, and  spent  his  early  years  in  the  atmosphere  of  an 
inn.  In  his  own  words,  he  wore  a  blue  apron,  washed 
mops,  cleaned  rooms,  and  did  the  work  of  a  tapster.  His 
confessions  of  youthful  vices  are  pitched  in  an  almost  hys- 
terical key,  and  they  reveal  a  curiously  mixed  character. 
He  pilfered  money  from  his  mother's  pocket — but  shared 
the  ill-got  coins  with  the  poor.  He  stole  books — but  they 
were  pious  books  intended  to  develop  religious  character. 
He  was  sent  to  the  local  grammar  school,  found  study 
distasteful,  and  swung  back  again  to  the  maternal  inn, 
with  its  servile  tasks  and  ignoble  companionships.  The 
boy,  however,  had  gleams  of  genius,  and  by  happy 
chance  secured  admission  to  Pembroke  College,  Oxford, 
as  a  servitor. 

He  did  not  excel  as  a  student,  but  the  religious  influ- 
ences of  the  Holy  Club  took  hold  of  him.  The  Wesleys 
became  his  spiritual  guides,  though  he  lacked  their  bal- 
ance and  sobriety.  lie  passed  through  religious  experi- 
ences, indeed,  which  would  seem  in  place  in  the  biography 
of  a  mediaeval  saint,  or  of  an  ascetic  of  the  early  Christian 
centuries.  Vehement  in  everything  else,  he  was  vehe- 
ment in  his  penitence,  and  in  the  austerities  with  which 
he  afflicted  his  body.  He  clad  himself  in  mean  clothes, 
vexed  his  body  by  denying  it  sleep,  ate  the  most  dis- 
tasteful food.  "Whole  days  and  weeks,"  he  says,  in  his 
exaggerated  fashion,  "have  I  spent  in  lying  prostrate  on 
the  ground  in  silent  and  watchful  prayer."  He  chose  the 
beautiful  and  famous  Walk  of  Christ  Church  for  the  scene 
of  some  of  his  self-mortifications,  and  would  kneel  under 


THE  THREE  GREAT  COMRADES        171 

the  trees  in  the  darkness,  in  the  winter  rain  or  amid  the 
falling  snow,  until  the  sound  of  the  great  bell  warned  him 
that  the  college  gates  were  about  to  close.  Reviewing  his 
youth,  Whiteneld  passes  a  terrible  sentence  on  himself. 
"From  my  cradle  to  my  manhood,"  he  cries,  "I  see 
nothing  in  me  but  a  fitness  to  be  damned."  There  is  a 
touch  of  the  histrionic  in  Whiteneld,  even  in  the  recital 
of  his  own  spiritual  biography ! 

Spiritual  deliverance  came  to  him  at  last,  and  came 
in  a  flood  of  rapture.  "Oh,"  he  cried,  as  he  tells  the 
story,  "  Oh,  with  what  joy,  joy  unspeakable,  even  joy 
full  of  glory,  when  the  weight  of  sin  went  off  and 
an  abiding  sense  of  the  love  of  God  broke  in.  ...  Go 
where  I  would  I  could  not  avoid  singing  psalms  almost 
aloud." 

There  was  a  radiant  brightness  in  Whitefield's  very 
nature  that  won  universal  affection,  and  his  new  spiritual 
mood  increased  that  radiance.  His  natural  gift  for  ora- 
tory, too,  had  already  made  itself  manifest.  He  was 
recognised  as  being  of  a  saintly  earnestness  in  religion, 
and  the  one  inevitable  career  for  him  was  the  pulpit. 
His  friends,  indeed,  urged  him  too  precipitately  in  that 
direction.  "  My  friends,"  wrote  Whiteneld,  "  wanted  me 
to  knock  my  head  against  the  pulpit,  and  how  some 
young  men  stand  up  here  and  there  and  preach  I  do 
not  know.  ...  I  have  prayed  a  thousand  times  till  the 
sweat  has  dropped  from  my  face  like  rain,  that  God  of 
His  infinite  mercy  would  not  let  me  enter  the  Church, 
till  He  called  me  and  thrust  me  to  the  work." 

He  was  just  twenty-one  when  he  received  deacon's 
orders,  and  he  at  once  leaped  into  fame  as  a  preacher. 
"  I  intended  to  make  150  sermons,"  he  says,  "  and  thought 
I  would  set  up  with  a  good  stock-in-trade."  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  this  greatest  of  English  preachers  only  possessed 
a  single  sermon  when  he  began  his  preaching  career.  In 
his  humility  he  put  his  first  and  solitary  discourse  into 
the  hands  of  a  friendly  clergyman,  to  show  how  unpre- 
pared for  the  work  of  the  pulpit  he  was.  The  clergyman 
used  one-half  of  the  sermon  at  his  morning  service,  and 
the  other  half  at  his  evening  service,  and  returned  it  to 
its  astonished  author  with  a  guinea  by  way  of  payment. 
In  his  very  first  effort  in  the  pulpit  Wnitefield  discovered 


172  WESLEY   AND    HIS   CENTURY 

he  had  no  need  of  a  manuscript.  So  great  indeed  was 
the  effect  of  that  discourse  that  complaint  was  made  to 
the  bishop  that  he  had  driven  no  less  than  fifteen  persons 
mad ! 

Whitefield  was  not  a  student,  and  not  in  any  deep 
sense  a  thinker.  He  had  few  of  the  gifts  of  a  leader  of 
men.  But  his  religious  sensibilities  were  singularly  keen. 
He  saw  the  great  truths  of  Christianity,  where  other  men 
only  reasoned  about  them ;  and  the  facts  of  the  spiritual 
world  were  as  real  to  him,  and  in  some  senses  as  clear, 
as  the  facts  of  earth  and  sky  with  which  his  physical 
senses  dealt.  They  overwhelmed  him  without  erushing 
him.  "  Few  men,"  says  Sir  James  Stephen,  "  ever  moved 
amongst  the  infinitudes  and  eternities  of  invisible  things 
with  less  embarrassment  or  less  of  silent  awe  than  White- 
field."  "  Silent  awe,"  indeed,  was  not  possible  to  a  man  so 
loudly  and  musically  vocal  as  Whitefield. 

He  was  above  middle  height,  with  singularly  fair  com- 
plexion, regular  features,  and  small  deep-set,  dark-blue 
eyes,  which  seemed  to  flash  with  brightness.  One,  as  it 
happened,  was  set  at  a  conflicting  angle  with  the  other, 
but  the  resultant  sojiint — as  in  the  case  of  another  famous 
preacher,  Edward  Irving — only  added  expressiveness  to 
his  face.  Whitefield  had  probably  the  most  musical  and 
"  carrying "  voice  that  ever  issued  from  a  human  throat. 
Its  sweetness  hung  in  the  charmed  ears  of  the  crowd  ;  its 
cadences  resembled  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  notes  of  some 
great  singer.  Whitefield  had,  in  addition,  a  body  of  iron 
and  nerves  of  steel.  Except  Wesley  himself,  no  other 
human  being  ever  talked  to  such  multitudes,  or  talked  for 
so  many  hours  a  day,  and  for  so  many  years  in  succession, 
as  did  Whitefield.  His  biographer  says  that  "in  the 
compass  of  a  single  week  he  spoke  in  general  forty  hours, 
very  often  sixty  hours,  and  that  to  thousands  of  people." 
And  he  did  this  for  years,  and  "  after  his  labours,  instead 
of  taking  rest,  he  was  engaged  in  offering  up  prayers  and 
intercessions,  or  in  singing  hymns,  as  his  manner  was, 
in  every  house  to  which  he  was  invited."  Whitefield 
in  a  word,  almost  as  much  as  Wesley,  seems,  in  his  well- 
nigh  miraculous  capacity  for  work,  to  belong  to  another 
race. 

Whitefield  achieved  his  greatest  triumphs  as  an  orator 


THE  THREE  GREAT  COMRADES        173 

in  the  open  air.     Sir  James  Stephen  gives  this  picture  of 
one  of  his  open-air  sermons  : — 

"  Taking  his  stand  on  some  rising  knoll,  his  tall  and  graceful 
figure  dressed  with  elaborate  propriety,  and  composed  into  an  easy 
and  commanding  attitude,  Whitefield's  'clear  blue  eye'  ranged 
over  thousands,  drawn  up  in  close  files  on  the  plain  below,  or 
clustering  into  masses  on  every  adjacent  eminence.  .  .  .  But 
the  rich  and  varied  tones  of  a  voice  of  unequalled  depth  and 
compass  quickly  silenced  every  ruder  sound — as  in  rapid  suc- 
cession its  ever-changing  melodies  passed  from  the  calm  of  simple 
narrative,  and  the  measured  distinctness  of  argument,  to  the 
vehemence  of  reproof,  and  the  pathos  of  heavenly  consolation. 
Sometimes  the  preacher  wept  exceedingly,  stamped  loudly  and 
passionately,  and  was  frequently  so  overcome  that  for  a  few 
seconds  one  would  suspect  he  could  never  recover,  and  when  he 
did,  nature  required  some  little  time  to  compose  herself.  The 
agitated  assembly  caught  the  passions  of  the  speaker,  and  ex- 
ulted, wept,  or  trembled  at  his  bidding." 

Whitefield  preached  under  conditions  and  to  audiences 
known  to  no  other  orators.  Passing  over  Hampton 
Common  he  finds  a  crowd  of  12,000  people  collected  to 
see  a  man  hung  hi  chains.  Here  is  an  audience,  a 
pulpit,  a  text ;  and  straightway  he  captures  the  crowd ! 
He  preaches  to  another  vast  multitude  assembled  to 
see  a  man  hanged,  and  the  hangman  himself  suspends 
his  office  while  Whitefield  discourses.  Some  wandering 
players  have  set  up  their  stage  at  a  country  fair ;  the 
crowd  rushes  together  to  grin  and  to  jest.  But  Whitefield 
suddenly  appears,  turns  the  whole  scene  to  religious 
uses,  spoils  the  players'  harvest,  and  preaches  a  sermon 
of  overwhelming  power. 

As  an  orator  Whitefield  had  some  strange  character- 
istics. An  ordinary  preacher,  if  he  has  delivered  one 
discourse  a  dozen  times,  feels  that  he  has  preached  it  to 
rags;  the  sound  of  it  becomes  hateful  to  his  own  ears. 
The  discourse  is  exhausted  of  all  vitality.  But  White- 
field  never  reached  his  highest  point  of  effectiveness  in 
a  sermon  until  he  had  preached  it  forty  times !  Then  it 
became  on  his  lips  a  perfect  instrument  of  persuasion. 

It  is  computed  that  he  preached  over  18,000  sermons; 
sixty-three  of  these  were  published  by  himself  during 


174  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

his  lifetime,  and  the  puzzled  reader  searches  them  in  vain 
to  discover  the  secret  of  their  marvellous  power.  They 
seem  commonplace,  familiar,  egotistical,  and  even  tawdry. 
The  secret  of  their  power  lay  in  the  personality  of  the 
preacher — the  expressive  eyes,  the  matchless  voice,  the 
trembling  lips,  the  face  that  seemed  to  shine  as  with  a 
mystic  light.  And  all  these  were  but  the  instruments 
and  servants  of  a  passionate  and  spiritual  earnestness, 
such  as  seldom  burned  in  a  human  soul.  Here  was  a 
man  with  a  single  purpose,  who  believed  with  absolute 
conviction  every  syllable  of  his  message.  His  vision  of 
heaven  and  of  hell  was  as  direct  as  that  of  the  great 
Florentine.  And  what  he  saw  he  had  the  orator's  power, 
the  great  actor's  power,  of  making  others  see.  And 
through  all  Whitefield's  oratory  glowed  —  sometimes 
flamed — a  passion  of  love  for  his  hearers.  "  You  feel," 
says  Sir  James  Stephen,  "that  you  have  to  do  with  a 
man  who  lived  and  spoke,  and  who  gladly  would  have 
died,  to  turn  his  hearers  from  the  path  of  destruction 
and  to  guide  them  to  holiness  and  peace." 

All  Whitefield's  sermons,  it  may  be  added,  are  but  so 
many  variations  of  two  ideas:  man  is  guilty,  but  may 
obtain  forgiveness  through  Jesus  Christ ;  man  is  death- 
less ;  he  stands  at  a  point  betwixt  the  two  mighty 
opposites  ^of  eternal  suffering  and  of  eternal  bliss.  The 
great  preacher's  oratory  was  thus  a  fiddle  with  only  two 
strings.  But  what  deep  and  moving  harmonies  they 
yielded ! 

Wesley  and  Whitefield  differed  at  many  points  both 
of  theology  and  of  practical  morality.  Whitefield  was  an 
ardent  Calvinist,  Wesley  a  convinced  Arminian.  Wesley 
branded  slavery  as  the  sum  of  all  villainies;  Whitefield 
bought  slaves  in  the  interests  of  his  orphan-house  in 
Georgia,  includes  them  as  cattle  in  the  list  of  his  stock 
and  piously  thanks  God  for  their  increase.  But  in  spite 
of  all  their  points  of  difference  Wesley  and  Whitefield 
belong  to  the  same  spiritual  type,  lived  under  the  empire 
of  the  same  lofty  motives,  and  had  almost  equal  part- 
nership in  the  greatest  religious  movement  in  English 
history.  Southey,  indeed,  declares  that  "  if  the  Wesleys 
had  never  existed  Whitefield  would  have  given  birth  to 
Methodism";  and  there  was  perhaps  never  written  a 


THE   THREE   GREAT   COMRADES  175 

sentence  of  less  insight.  Whatever  Whitefield  might 
have  done,  he  himself,  the  most  erratic  and  planless  of 
men,  could  never  have  built  the  enduring  and  stately 
fabric  of  Methodism.  Whitefield's  influence  resembles 
the  gale  sweeping  over  the  surface  of  the  sea.  The  effect 
is  instant,  and  visible  to  every  sense.  But  of  Wesley's 
work  the  true  symbol  is  the  coral  reef,  built  up  slowly, 
and  cell  by  cell,  in  the  sea  depths,  over  which  the  soil 
forms,  and  on  which  great  cities  will  rise  and  unborn 
nations  live.  The  one  stirred  the  surface  ;  the  other  built 
up  from  the  depths,  built  deeply,  and  built  for  all  time. 

Whitefield's  ideal  was  to  fly  from  one  crowd  of  waiting 
hearers  to  another.  Wesley  had  the  social  instinct.  He 
knew  the  forces  born  of  companionship,  the  shelter 
created  by  companionship.  So  from  the  very  beginning 
of  his  work  he  was  busy  organising  little  societies  where 
spiritual  life  could  be  sheltered  and  nourished;  societies 
which  supplied  an  external  reflex  for  the  inner  spiritual 
experience  of  those  who  belonged  to  them.  While  White- 
field  was  moving  the  crowds,  Wesley  was  organising  these 
tiny  centres  of  living  structure  ;  and  the  societies  Wesley 
gathered  were  the  cells  in  the  coral  reef ! 

Wesley,  of  course,  did  not  invent  the  societies  into 
which  he  gathered  his  converts.  Such  societies  sprang 
into  existence  by  way  of  protest  against  the  black  night 
of  immorality  which  settled  down  over  England  after  the 
Restoration  and  before  Wesley  himself  was  born.  Bohler 
revived  these  societies,  and  gave  them  a  more  spiritual 
tone.  Miss  Wedgwood,  in  view  of  this,  says  that  "  England 

¥a,ve  the  form  of  the  societies,  and  Germany  the  spirit." 
his  is  one  of  those  plausible  generalities  which  delight 
the  ear  but  do  not  endure  the  test  of  facts.  All  that 
need  be  noted  just  now,  however,  is  that  when  Wesley 
returned  from  Germany  and  began  the  real  work  of  his 
life,  by  some  wise,  unconscious  instinct  he  busied  himself 
hi  nourishing  and  multiplying  the  societies  which  in 
concert  with  Peter  Bohler,  he  had  already  begun  to  form. 
This  work  was  less  dramatic  and  immediately  visible  than 
that  of  Whitefield's,  but  it  was  more  enduring. 

It  is  the  fashion  to  say  of  Whitetield  and  John  and 
Charles  Wesley  that  the  first  was  the  orator,  the  second 
the  statesman,  the  third  the  singer,  of  the  great  religious 


176  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

movement  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  the  three 
actors  in  that  great  drama  are  hardly  to  be  packed  into 
separate  compartments,  and  labelled,  in  this  fashion. 
John  Wesley  had  more  than  a  touch  of  the  poet,  as  well 
as  the  genius  of  a  statesman;  and  if  oratory  is  the  art 
of  using  human  speech  as  an  instrument  of  overwhelming 
persuasion,  then  Charles  Wesley  was  an  orator  as  truly 
as  his  elder  brother,  or  as  Whitefield  himself,  though  of 
a  quite  different  type. 

Charles  Wesley,  tried  by  the  test  of  the  work  he  accom- 
plished, was  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  persuasive 
speech.  For  fifteen  years  he  moved  through  the  towns 
and  villages  of  England  and  Ireland,  preaching  in  crowded 
churches  or  to  vast  multitudes  under  the  open  skies,  and 
always  with  strange  power.  There  is  something  almost 
awe-inspiring  in  the  sight  of  a  multitude  of  15,000  or 
20,000  pieople  standing  silent,  hushed,  and  expectant, 
waiting  for  the  sound  of  a  single  human  voice.  White- 
field  himself,  the  greatest  of  field- preachers,  has  told 
how  the  sight  impressed  him.  "  All  was  hushed  when  I 
began,"  he  says,  "  and  the  people,  standing  round  the  hill 
in  the  profoundest  silence,  filled  me  with  admiration.  To 
behold  such  crowds  standing  together  in  such  a  silence, 
or  to  hear  the  echo  of  their  singing  running  from  one  end 
of  them  to  the  other,  was  very  solemn." 

To  draw  such  a  crowd,  to  hold  it  spell-bound,  to  sway 
it  with  religious  emotion,  to  melt  it  into  penitence,  to 
kindle  it  to  joy,  is  one  of  the  greatest  tasks  for  which 
human  speech  has  ever  been  used.  To  do  it  day  after 
day,  sometimes  two  or  three  times  in  a  single  day ;  to 
do  it  for  fifteen  years  as  the  ordinary  business  of  life ; 
to  do  it  intermittently  till  old  age,  is  a  task  the  mere 
vision  of  which  might  have  stricken  Demosthenes  with 
despair.  And  Charles  Wesley  performed  this  strange 
feat !  He  had  not  the  organ-like  voice  and  the  dramatic 
genius  of  Whitefield,  nor  yet  his  brother's  strange  secret 
of  calm  and  overwhelming  solemnity  of  address.  The 
secret  of  Charles  Wesley's  power  in  preaching  lay  in 
the  realm  of  the  emotions.  The  tears  ran  down  his 
cheeks;  his  voice  took  cadences  of  infinite  tenderness. 
It  shook  with  a  trembling  pathos  of  emotion;  and  the 
contagion  of  his  feeling  melted  whole  crowds. 


THE  THREE  GREAT  COMRADES         177 

In  old  age  Charles  Wesley's  preaching  took  a  curious 
character.  He  preached  with  his  eyes  closed,  making 
long  pauses,  with  bent  and  listening  head,  as  though 
waiting  for  some  message  from  unseen  realms.  He 
fumbled  with  his  hands  about  his  breast,  or  leaned  upon 
the  pulpit  Bible  with  his  elbows.  He  sometimes  paused 
and  asked  the  congregation  to  sing  a  hymn  until  his 
message  came  to  him.  But  in  the  prime  of  his  life  he 
was  a  preacher  of  almost  unsurpassed  power,  talking  in 
sentences  which  had  the  rush  and  impact  of  bullets,  but 
which  vibrated  with  electric  thrills  of  emotion. 

Charles  Wesley's  development  of  extraordinary  power 
in  preaching  was  both  sudden  and  unexpected.  He  notes 
with  characteristic  accuracy  the  exact  date  when  he  first 
attempted  to  preach  without  notes.  "At  St.  Antholin's 
Church,  on  Friday,  October  20,"  he  says,  "  seeing  so  few 
present,  I  thought  of  preaching  extempore.  I  was  afraid ; 
yet  I  ventured  on  the  promise,  'Lo,  I  am  with  you 
always.' "  Only  a  few  months  afterwards  he  could  stand 
up  before  a  crowd  of  15,000  people  and  speak  without 
fear,  or  pause,  or  failure  of  power,  for  two  unbroken 
hours. 

Charles  Wesley  had  his  limitations.  He  never  could 
succeed,  for  example,  in  getting  his  natural  feelings  and 
his  formal  ecclesiastical  beliefs  to  agree  together.  His 
best  biographer,  Thomas  Jackson,  says  that  through 
many  years  he  entertained  on  various  subjects  two 
conflicting  sets  of  principles,  and  acted  on  them  alter- 
nately with  equal  sincerity,  and  without  even  suspecting 
their  inconsistency !  But  this  is  hardly  just  to  Charles 
Wesley.  The  fact  is  he  felt  truth  rather  than  reasoned 
about  it,  and  his  feelings  were  wiser  than  his  reasoned 
beliefs.  But  it  is  quite  true  that  he  remained  delightfully 
and  permanently  unconscious  of  the  discord  betwixt  his 
theories  and  his  feelings. 

He  was  in  theory  a  High  Churchman  of  the  narrowest 
order.  He  declared  that  if  he  left  the  Church  of  England 
he  would  be  afraid  to  meet  the  disembodied  spirit  of  his 
father  in  Paradise.  That  most  irascible  of  High  Church- 
men, in  such  a  cause,  would  quarrel  with  him  even  in 
those  celestial  realms !  Charles  Wesley's  inconsistencies, 
bred  of  the  unconscious  conflict  betwixt  his  generous 

M 


178  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

impulses  and  his  ecclesiastical  prejudices,  are  amusing. 
He  was  the  first  to  administer  the  Sacrament  to  the 
new  converts  in  an  unconsecrated  building,  yet  he  was 
filled  with  pious  horror  when  the  Methodists  asked  to  re- 
ceive the  Sacrament  at  the  hands  of  their  own  preachers. 
He  spent  his  earlier  years  in  open-air  preaching,  and  the 
years  of  his  old  age  in  preaching  hi  City  Road  Chapel ; 
yet  he  made  it  his  dying  charge  that,  his  bones  should 
not  lie  in  the  grounds  of  that  chapel,  because  they  were 
unconsecrated.  "It  is  a  pity,"  wrote  his  wiser  brother 
John,  afterwards,  "  that  my  brother's  bones  were  not 
deposited  where  my  bones  will  lie.  Certainly  that  ground 
is  as  holy  as  any  in  England;  it  contains  many  bonny 
dead."  It  is  an  example  of  the  irony  of  things  that 
Charles  Wesley's  sacerdotal  horror  at  the  thought  of 
his  bones  resting  in  the  grounds  of  City  Road  Chapel 
has  had  the  effect  of  dismissing  them  to  soil  still  less 
sacred.  The  particular  part  of  the  churchyard  where 
they  sleep  was,  it  seems,  never  consecrated ! 

Charles  Wesley  said,  "  My  brother  is  all  hope,  I  am 
all  fear;"  but  that  is  not  quite  accurate.  Charles  was 
in  temperament  as  sanguine  as  his  brother  John,  but 
one  side  of  his  nature  made  him  fear  the  results  of  the 
very  things  which  the  other  and  nobler  side  of  his  nature 
made  him  do. 

He  was  a  little,  short-sighted  man,  of  hurrying  speech, 
odd  in  manner,  desultory  in  mental  habit,  hot  in  his 
resentments,  most  loyal  in  his  friendships,  and  with  a 
simplicity  of  mind  which  made  him  eminently  lovable. 
He  lacked  the  strength,  the  fixity  of  purpose,  the  keen 
logic,  the  ordered  and  systematic  intellect  of  his  greater 
brother.  But  he  outran  him  in  some  things,  and  was, 
perhaps,  the  more  lovable  of  the  two  for  the  very  reason 
that  he  was  less  faultlessly  perfect.  For  love  is  sometimes 
nourished  by  the  things  it  has  to  forgive. 


CHAPTER  V 

WESLEY   AS   A   PREACHER 

THE  great  revival  was  by  this  time  in  full  progress,  and 
even  at  this  early  stage  two  concurrent  and  parallel  lines 
of  work  are  visible  in  it.  One  is  aggressive,  and  consists 
of  a  great  chain  of  preaching  services  stretching  through 
the  whole  of  Wesley's  lifetime,  and  covering  the  three  king- 
doms. The  other  is  conservative,  and  is  represented  by  the 
tiny  societies  which  were  formed  everywhere,  and  within 
whose  sheltering  curves  the  new  converts  were  gathered. 

Wesley's  supreme  instrument  was  preaching.  He  used 
other  forces;  he  built  schools,  he  organised  societies,  he 
published  books,  he  waged  great  controversies,  he  was 
tireless  in  correspondence  and  conversation.  But  not 
literature,  or  controversy,  or  personal  influence  is  Wesley's 
trusted  and  most  effective  instrument.  First  and  last^the 
movement  Wesley  represents  is  the  revival  on  an  unpre- 
cedented scale,  and  with  unprecedented  effects,  of  the 
office  and  work  of  the  preacher.  "  It  pleased  God,"  wrote 
Paul,  as  the  spokesman  of  the  earliest  Christian  generation, 
"  by  the  foolisnness  of  preaching  to  save  them  that  believe." 
And  in  Wesley's  movement  Christianity  simply  reverted 
to  its  first  and  greatest  instrument  of  power. 

But  the  preaching  of  the  new  movement,  as  we  have 
seen,  broke  away  from  traditional  forms.  It  was  open-air 
preaching,  not  imprisoned  in  stone  walls.  It  was  itinerant 
preaching,  not  confined  to  fixed  spots.  It  took  the  three 
kingdoms  for  its  field.  It  turned  aside  from  the  drowsy 
handfuls  in  the  churches,  and  sought  with  eager  pity 
the  forgotten  multitudes  outside  them,  fast  drifting  into 
a  worse  heathenism  than  that  which  lay  on  British  soil 
before  Augustine  landed.  Instead  of  the  pulpit  the 
preachers  of  the  great  revival  took  the  hill-side,  the 
market-place,  the  village  green,  the  stony  city  lane ;  wher- 
ever men  would  listen  there  they  delivered  their  message. 

179     ' 


180  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

And  the  new  conditions  created  new  methods.  The 
decorous  platitudes  of  drowsy  divines,  mumbled  to  nodding 
congregations,  gave  place  to  the  living  speech  of  living 
men ;  of  men  with  a  message,  who  felt  themselves  to  be 
the  direct  spokesmen  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  If  Wesley 
and  his  comrades  had  not  been  thrust  out  of  the  churches, 
the  essential  genius  of  the  movement,  the  nature  of  the 
work  to  be  done,  the  methods  necessary  for  its  accom- 
plishment, would  have  taken  them  out.  The  ancient 
channels  through  which  truth  ran  were  narrow  at  best, 
and  they  had  become  fatally  clogged.  No  current  could 
stir  in  them.  New  channels  must  be  opened ;  new  forces 
called  into  exercise ;  new  classes  reached.  So  at  its  very 
first  step  the  great  revival  breaks  out  of  existing  ecclesi- 
astical boundaries.  It  betakes  itself  to  the  busy  street, 
the  wind-swept  moors,  wherever  men  and  women  for 
whom  Christ  died  could  be  gathered.  This  was  preaching 
as  the  first  Christian  century  knew  it. 

And  Wesley  quickly  became  the  most  commanding 
figure  in  the  new  crusade.  He  lacked  some  of  Whitefield's 
special  gifts  as  an  orator,  yet  he  somehow  was  as  successful 
in  open-air  preaching  as  even  his  great  comrade ;  and  he 
brought  to  the  work  more  orderly  plans,  and  a  more  con- 
centrated purpose,  than  even  Whitefield. 

What  was  the  secret  of  Wesley's  power  as  a  preacher  ? 
In  many  respects  it  might  be  imagined  that  he  was  the 
last  man  to  sway  an  eighteenth  century  crowd.  He  was 
a  gentleman  by  birth  and  habit,  a  scholar  by  training,  a 
man  of  fine  and  almost  fastidious  taste,  with  an  English- 
man's uneasy  dislike  of  emotion,  and  a  High  Churchman's 
hatred  of  irregularity.  He  had  little  imagination  and  no 
descriptive  power.  He  told  no  ancedotes,  as  a  rule,  and 
certainly  fired  oft'  no  jests.  What  fitness  had  he  to  talk 
to  peasants,  to  miners,  to  the  rabble  of  the  city,  to  the 
slow-thinking  farmer  drawn  from  his  plough-tail  ? 

Yet  he  stood  up,  a  little,  trim,  symmetrical  figure ;  his 
smooth  black  hair  exactly  parted  ;  his  complexion  clear  and 
pure  as  that  of  a  girl;  his  hazel  eyes  flashing  like  points 
of  steel.  And  beneath  his  words  the  crowd  was  melted  and 
subdued  until  it  resembled  a  routed  army  shaken  with 
fear  and  broken  with  emotion ;  men  and  women  not  seldom 
falling  to  the  ground  in  a  passion  of  distress.  His  voice 


WESLEY    AS    A    PREACHER  181 

had  no  trumpet  notes;  but  it  was  clear  as  a  silver  flute, 
and  ran  across  the  wondering  crowd  to  its  farthest  verge. 

There  was  undoubtedly  something  of  prophet-like  force 
in  Wesley's  preaching.  He  drew  his  inspiration  from  far- 
off  realms.  His  printed  sermons  are  only  the  bones  of  his 
spoken  discourses,  and  they  are  commonly  dry  as  bones, 
though  they  have  something  of  mastodon-like  scale.  But 
his  spiritual  insight  was  hardly  less  than  terrible.  He 
seemed  to  see  into  men's  souls ;  to  put  his  finger  upon  the 
hidden  sin,  the  unconfessed  fear.  He  had  the  power  of 
making  each  man  feel  as  though  he  talked  to  him  alone. 
And  there  was  something  in  his  discourse — a  note  in  his 
voice,  a  flash  in  his  eye — that  thrilled  the  crowd  with  awe, 
awe  that  not  seldom  deepened  into  dread.  The  mood  of 
the  speaker  was  one  of  perfect  calmness.  But  it  was  the 
calm  of  power,  of  certainty,  of  an  authority  which  ran  back 
into  the  spiritual  world.  Nelson  gives  perhaps  the  best 
picture  of  John  Wesley  as  a  preacher.  He  says : — 

"Mr.  Whitefield  was  to  me  as  a  man  who  could  play  well  on 
an  instrument,  for  his  preaching  was  pleasant  to  me,  and  I  loved 
the  man ;  so  that  if  any  one  offered  to  disturb  him,  I  was  ready 
to  fight  for  him.  But  I  did  not  understand  him.  I  was  like  a 
wandering  bird  cast  out  of  its  nest  till  Mr.  John  Wesley  came  to 
preach  his  first  sermon  at  Moorfields.  ...  As  soon  as  he  got 
upon  the  stand,  he  stroked  back  his  hair  and  turned  his  face 
towards  where  I  stood,  and,  I  thought,  fixed  his  eyes  upon  me. 
His  countenance  fixed  such  an  awful  dread  upon  me,  before  I 
heard  him  speak,  that  it  made  my  heart  beat  like  the  pendulum 
of  a  clock ;  and  when  he  did  speak,  I  thought  his  whole  discourse 
was  aimed  at  me.  When  he  had  done  I  said,  '  This  man  can 
tell  the  secrets  of  my  heart ;  he  hath  not  left  me  there  ;  for  he 
hath  showed  the  remedy,  even  the  blood  of  Jesus.'  I  thought 
he  spoke  to  no  one  but  me,  and  I  durst  not  look  up,  for  I 
imagined  all  the  people  were  looking  at  me.  .  .  .  But  before 
Mr.  Wesley  concluded  his  sermon  he  cried  out,  '  Let  the  wicked 
forsake  his  way,  and  the  unrighteous  man  his  thoughts ;  and  let 
him  return  unto  the  Lord,  and  He  will  have  mercy  upon  him  ; 
and  to  our  God,  for  He  will  abundantly  pardon.'  I  said,  '  If 
that  be  true,  I  will  turn  to  God  to-day.' " 

Who  can  wonder  that  a  preacher  with  this  strange 
power  could  shake  the  hearts  of  multitudes,  and  stamp 
nimself  on  the  imagination  of  the  three  kingdoms  ! 


182  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  brief  visits  to  London,  and 
a  hasty  run  into  Wales,  Wesley  spent  the  remainder  of 
1739  in  Bristol.  In  nine  months,  it  is  reckoned,  he  de- 
livered at  least  five  hundred  sermons  and  expositions, 
and  only  six  of  these  were  in  churches.  His  plan  was 
to  expound  the  Bible  in  one  or  other  of  the  little  societies 
every  night,  and  spend  the  days  in  open-air  services.  He 
has  left  on  record  his  teaching  at  this  period,  and  to  his 
open-air  audiences.  Religion,  he  proclaimed,  does  not 
consist  in  negatives;  in  external  morality;  in  orthodox 
opinions.  It  is  the  creation  of  a  new  nature  in  us.  The 
sole  condition  is  repentance  towards  God  and  faith  in  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He  that  believes  is  justified  by  the 
redemption  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus,  and,  being  justified, 
has  the  consciousness  of  a  new  relation  to  God  and  of 
power  over  sin. 

This  is  simple  and  obvious  teaching,  but  it  is  curious 
to  note  that  the  doctrine  that  we  are  saved  through  faith, 
which  is  the  very  essence  of  Christianity,  and  which  was 
now  the  burden  of  Wesley's  sermons,  kindled  the  most 
active  enmity.  Says  Wesley  : — 

"We  could  hardly  speak  of  anything  else,  either  in  public  or 
private.  It  shone  upon  our  minds  with  so  strong  a  light  that 
it  was  our  constant  theme.  It  was  our  daily  subject,  both  in 
verse  and  prose ;  and  we  vehemently  defended  it  against  all 
mankind.  But,  in  doing  this,  we  were  assaulted  and  abused  on 
every  side.  We  were  everywhere  represented  as  mad  dogs,  and 
treated  accordingly.  We  were  stoned  in  the  streets,  and  several 
times  narrowly  escaped  with  our  lives.  In  sermons,  newspapers, 
and  pamphlets  of  all  kinds,  we  were  painted  as  unheard-of  mon- 
sters. But  this  moved  us  not." 

The  preaching  begun  under  these  new  conditions  was 
attended  by  marvellous  results.  It  was  the  preaching  of 
early  apostolic  times,  and  with  many  of  the  results  of  the 
apostolic  age.  Whole  pages  of  John  Wesley's  Journal, 
indeed,  resemble  a  new  chapter  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
written  in  modern  terms.  It  is  inscribed  with  the  records 
of  conversions ;  of  conversions  sudden  in  point  of  time, 
dramatic  in  character,  rapturous  in  joy.  Later  Wesley, 
after  his  methodical  fashion,  asked  some  of  his  converts 
to  write  in  plain  and  sober  prose  the  story  of  their  spiritual 


WESLEY   AS    A    PREACHER  183 

experiences,  and  the  result  is  a  series  of  human  documents 
of  enduring  and  curious  interest.  The  flight  of  a  century 
still  leaves  them  vivid. 

Wesley's  own  account  of  the  practical  results  of  the 
work  is  thus  given  in  reply  to  an  angry  critic : — 

"The  question  between  us  turns  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  on 
matter  of  fact.  You  deny  that  God  does  now  work  these  effects ; 
at  least,  that  He  works  them  in  this  manner.  I  affirm  both ; 
because  I  have  heard  these  things  with  my  own  ears,  and  have 
seen  them  with  my  eyes.  I  have  seen  (as  far  as  a  thing  of  this 
kind  can  be  seen)  very  many  persons  changed  in  a  moment  from 
the  spirit  of  fear,  horror,  despair,  to  the  spirit  of  love,  joy,  and 
peace ;  and  from  sinful  desire,  till  then  reigning  over  them,  to 
a  sure  desire  of  doing  the  will  of  God.  These  are  matters  of 
fact,  whereof  I  have  been  and  almost  daily  am  an  eye  or  ear 
witness.  .  .  .  And  that  such  a  change  was  then  wrought,  appears 
(not  from  their  shedding  tears  only,  or  falling  into  fits,  or  crying 
out;  these  are  not  the  fruits,  as  you  seem  to  suppose,  whereby 
I  judge,  but)  from  the  whole  tenor  of  their  life,  till  then,  many 
ways  wicked ;  from  that  time  holy,  just,  and  good. 

"  I  will  show  you  him  that  was  a  lion  till  then,  and  is  now  a 
lamb,  him  that  was  a  drunkard,  and  is  now  exemplarily  sober ; 
the  whoremonger  that  was,  who  now  abhors  the  very  'garment 
spotted  by  the  flesh.'  These  are  my  living  arguments  for  what  I 
assert,  viz.  '  that  God  does  now,  as  aforetime,  give  remission  of  sins, 
and  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  even  to  us  and  to  our  children.' " l 

But  a  feature  began  presently  to  emerge  in  Wesley's 
meetings  which  is  still  a  puzzle  to  science,  and  which  at 
the  moment  seemed  to  justify  the  worst  things  Wesley's 
angriest  critics  could  say  about  the  revival.  Kemarkable 
scenes  of  physical  agitation  and  distress  broke  out.  It 
was  as  if  some  sudden  blast  of  energy,  outside  the  order  of 
nature — whether  evil  or  good  could  not  be  easily  deter- 
mined— swept  over  the  listening  multitudes.  The  first  of 
these  strange  scenes  occurred  on  April  17,  1739,  at  a  meet- 
ing of  one  of  the  societies.  Wesley  tells  the  story  in  his 
Journal : — 

"  At  Baldwin  Street,  we  called  upon  God  to  confirm  His  word. 
Immediately,  one  that  stood  by  cried  out  aloud,  with  the  utmost 

1  Journal,  May  20,  1739. 


184  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

vehemence,  even  in  the  agonies  of  death.  But  we  continued  in 
prayer,  till  a  new  song  was  put  into  her  mouth,  a  thanksgiving 
unto  our  God.  Soon  after,  two  other  persons  were  seized  with 
strong  pain  and  constrained  to  roar  for  the  disquietude  of  their 
heart.  But  it  was  not  long  before  they  likewise  burst  forth  into 
praise  to  God  their  Saviour." 

A  still  more  remarkable  scene  took  place  in  the 
same  locality  a  fortnight  later.  Wesley  records  in  his 
Journal : — 

"May  i. — At  Baldwin  Street,  my  voice  could  scarce  be  heard 
amidst  the  groanings  of  some,  and  the  cries  of  others  calling 
aloud  to  Him  that  is  mighty  to  save.  A  Quaker,  who  stood  by, 
was  very  angry,  and  was  biting  his  lips,  and  knitting  his  brows, 
when  he  dropped  down  as  thunder-struck.  The  agony  he  was  in 
was  even  terrible  to  behold.  We  prayed  for  him,  and  he  soon 
lifted  up  his  head  with  joy,  and  joined  us  in  thanksgiving.  A 
bystander,  John  Hay  den,  a  weaver,  a  man  of  regular  life  and 
conversation,  one  that  constantly  attended  the  public  prayers 
and  Sacrament,  and  was  zealous  for  the  Church,  and  against 
Dissenters,  laboured  to  convince  the  people  that  all  this  was  a 
delusion  of  the  devil;  but  next  day,  while  reading  a  sermon  on 
'  Salvation  by  Faith,'  he  suddenly  changed  colour,  fell  off  his 
chair,  and  began  screaming,  and  beating  himself  against  the 
ground.  The  neighbours  were  alarmed  and  flocked  together. 
When  I  came  in  I  found  him  on  the  floor,  the  room  being  full 
of  people,  and  two  or  three  holding  him  as  well  as  they  could. 
He  immediately  fixed  his  eyes  on  me,  and  said,  '  Ay,  this  is  he 
I  said  deceived  the  people.  But  God  has  overtaken  me.  I  said 
it  was  a  delusion  of  the  devil;  but  this  is  no  delusion.'  Then 
he  roared  aloud,  '  O  thou  devil !  thou  cursed  devil !  yea,  thou 
legion  of  devils  !  thou  canst  not  stay  in  me.  Christ  will  cast 
thee  out.  I  know  His  work  is  begun.  Tear  me  in  pieces  if  thou 
wilt,  but  thou  canst  not  hurt  me.'  He  then  beat  himself  against 
the  ground ;  his  breast  heaving  as  if  in  the  pangs  of  death,  and 
great  drops  of  sweat  trickling  down  his  face.  We  all  betook 
ourselves  to  prayer.  His  pangs  ceased,  and  both  his  body  and 
soul  were  set  at  liberty.  With  a  clear,  strong  voice  he  cried, 
'  This  is  the  Lord's  doing ;  and  it  is  marvellous  in  our  eyes. 
Blessed  be  the  Lord  God  of  Israel,  from  this  time  forth  for 
evermore.'  I  called  again  an  hour  after.  We  found  his 
body  weak  as  that  of  an  infant,  and  his  voice  lost ;  but  his  soul 
was  in  peace,  full  of  love,  and  rejoicing  in  hope  of  the  glory  of 
God." 


WESLEY    AS    A    PREACHER  185 

On  May  2 1  the  scene  was  repeated,  but  this  time  in  one 
of  the  open-air  services  : — 

"While  I  was  preaching,  God  began  to  make  bare  His  arm, 
not  in  a  close  room,  neither  in  private,  but  in  the  open  air,  and 
before  more  than  two  thousand  witnesses.  One,  and  another, 
and  another  were  struck  to  the  earth  ;  exceedingly  trembling  at 
the  presence  of  His  power.  Others  cried,  with  a  loud  and  bitter 
cry,  '  What  must  we  do  to  be  saved  1 '  In  the  evening,  at  St. 
Nicholas  Street,  I  was  interrupted,  almost  as  soon  as  I  had  begun 
to  speak,  by  the  cries  of  one  who  strongly  cried  for  pardon  and 
peace.  Others  dropped  down  as  dead.  Thomas  Maxfield  began 
to  roar  out,  and  beat  himself  against  the  ground,  so  that  six  men 
could  scarcely  hold  him.  Many  others  began  to  cry  out  to  the 
Saviour  of  all,  insomuch  that  all  the  house,  and  indeed  all  the 
street  for  some  space,  was  in  an  uproar.  But  we  continued  in 
prayer,  and  the  greater  part  found  rest  to  their  souls." 

These  extraordinary  manifestations  startled  and  dis- 
quieted even  Wesley's  comrades.  Whitefield  wrote  to 
him  on  June  25,  blaming  Wesley  for  "giving  so  much 
encouragement  to  these  convulsions.  Were  I  to  do  so," 
he  said,  "  how  many  would  cry  out  every  night."  Twelve 
days  later  Whitefield  was  in  Bristol,  and  found  that  the 
same  scenes  attended  his  own  service : — 

"  In  the  ^  application  of  his  sermon,  four  persons  sank  down 
close  to  him  almost  in  the  same  moment.  One  of  them  lay  with- 
out either  sense  or  motion.  A  second  trembled  exceedingly.  The 
third  had  strong  convulsions  all  over  his  body,  but  made  no  noise 
unless  by  groans.  The  fourth,  equally  convulsed,  called  upon 
God  with  strong  cries  and  tears." 

These  outbreaks  of  physical  anguish  were  not  confined 
to  public  services  and  to  crowds ;  they  seized  individuals 
in  their  homes.  Here  is  one  terrible  story  which  Wesley 
records  in  his  Journal  :— 

"  October  23. — I  was  pressed  to  visit  a  young  woman  at  Kings- 
wood.  I  found  her  on  the  bed,  two  or  three  persons  holding  her. 
Anguish,  horror,  and  despair,  above  all  description,  appeared  in 
her  pale  face.  The  thousand  distortions  of  her  whole  body  showed 
how  the  dogs  of  hell  were  gnawing  at  her  heart.  The  shrieks 
intermixed  were  scarce  to  be  endured.  She  screamed  out,  '  I  am 
damned,  damned ;  lost  for  ever !  Six  days  ago  you  might  have 


186  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

helped  me.  But  it  is  past.  I  am  the  deviFs  now,  I  have  given 
myself  to  him ;  his  I  am,  him  I  must  serve,  with  him  I  must  go 
to  hell ;  I  will  be  his,  I  will  serve  him,  I  will  go  with  him  to 
hell ;  I  cannot  be  saved,  I  will  not  be  saved.  I  must,  I  will,  I 
will  be  damned ! '  She  then  began  praying  to  the  devil.  We 
began  to  sing,  '  Arm  of  the  Lord,  awake  !  awake  ! '  She  immedi- 
ately sank  down  as  asleep ;  but,  as  soon  as  we  left  off,  broke  out 
again,  with  inexpressible  vehemence  :  '  Stony  hearts,  break !  I 
am  a  warning  to  you.  Break,  break,  poor  stony  hearts !  I  am 
damned  that  you  may  be  saved.  You  need  not  be  damned, 
though  I  must.'  She  then  fixed  her  eyes  on  a  corner  of  the 
ceiling,  and  said,  '  There  he  is.  Come,  good  devil,  come.  You 
said  you  would  dash  my  brains  out ;  come,  do  it  quickly.  I  am 
yours,  I  will  be  yours.'  We  interrupted  her  by  calling  again 
upon  God ;  on  which  she  sank  down  as  before." 

A  similar  instance  took  place  a  few  days  after- 
wards : — 

"  October  27. — I  was  sent  for  to  Kingswood  again,  to  one  of 
those  who  had  been  so  ill  before.  A  violent  rain  began  just  as  I 
set  out.  Just  at  that  time,  the  woman  (then  three  miles  off)  cried 
out,  '  Yonder  comes  Wesley,  galloping  as  fast  as  he  can  ! '  When 
I  was  come  she  burst  into  a  horrid  laughter,  and  said,  '  No  power, 
no  power ;  no  faith,  no  faith.  She  is  mine,  her  soul  is  mine.  I 
have  her,  and  will  not  let  her  go.'  We  begged  of  God  to  increase 
our  faith.  Meanwhile  her  pangs  increased  more  and  more ;  so 
that  one  would  have  imagined,  by  the  violence  of  her  throes,  her 
body  must  have  been  shattered  to  pieces.  One,  who  was  clearly 
convinced  this  was  no  natural  disorder,  said,  '  I  think  Satan  is 
let  loose.  I  fear  he  will  not  stop  here,'  and  added,  '  I  command 
thee,  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  to  tell  if  thou  hast  commis- 
sion to  torment  any  other  soul.'  It  was  immediately  answered — 

'  I  have.      L y   C r,  and   S h  J s.'     We   betook 

ourselves  to  prayer  again  ;  and  ceased  not  till  she  began,  with  a 
clear  voice,  and  composed,  cheerful  look,  to  sing,  '  Praise  God, 
from  whom  all  blessings  flow.' " 

The  persons  named  in  this  case  lived  at  some  dis- 
tance; they  were  at  the  moment  in  perfect  health;  but 
a  day  afterwards  they  were  affected  in  exactly  the  same 
way  as  the  unfortunate  woman  whose  case  has  been 
described. 

Many  explanations  of  these  curious  phenomena  are 
ottered.  Southey  resolves  them  into  mere  animal  mag- 


WESLEY   AS   A   PREACHER  187 

netism  and  the  contagion  of  excitement.  "There  are 
passions,"  he  says  truly  enough,  "  which  are  as  infectious 
as  the  plague,  and  fear  itself  is  not  more  so  than  fanati- 
cism." But  the  sensibilities  and  emotions  to  which  Wes- 
ley was  making  his  appeal  when  these  scenes  broke  out 
certainly  cannot  be  placed  under  the  category  of  "  fanati- 
cism " ;  nor  was  there  anything  being  said  or  done  at  the 
moment  to  awaken  "fear."  Isaac  Taylor  finds  in  these 
scenes  a  reproduction  hi  modern  terms  of  the  demonia- 
cal possessions  recorded  in  the  New  Testament.  To  the 
purely  secular  mind  they  perhaps  recall  the  dancing 
mania  of  the  fourteenth  century,  or  the  convulsion- 
naires  of  France  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Only  in 
Wesley's  case  the  subject  of  these  manifestations  were 
solid  Englishmen,  and  not  excitable  French  women  and 
children. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  similar  phenomena  have  made  their 
appearance  at  widely  remote  points  of  time  and  under  very 
unlike  circumstances.  Exactly  such  scenes  occurred  hi 
Scotland  under  Erskine's  preaching,  and  in  America  under 
the  preaching  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  But  Edwards  un- 
doubtedly preached  a  terrifying  gospel,  and  preached  it 
in  a  terrifying  way.  Wesley's  methods  were  parted  by 
a  very  wide  interval  indeed  from  those  of  the  great  New 
England  evangelist. 

Wonder  is  often  expressed  that  these  manifestations 
began,  not  under  the  preaching  of  Whitefield,  with  his 
lion-like  voice  and  dramatic  powers;  nor  yet  under  that 
of  Charles  Wesley,  with  his  concentrated  and  overwhelm- 
ing appeal  to  the  emotions.  They  occurred  while  John 
Wesley,  with  his  grave  brow,  his  composed  look,  his  clear 
and  level  voice,  his  appeal  to  reason  and  conscience,  was 
preaching.  And  yet  it  is  intelligible  why  these  phenomena 
began  under  the  preaching  of  John  Wesley  rather  than 
under  that  of  either  of  his  comrades.  Whitefield  appealed 
to  the  senses  and  to  the  imagination,  Charles  Wesley 
to  the  emotions.  But  John  Wesley,  for  all  his  strange 
calmness,  struck  a  deeper  note,  and  moved  his  hearers 
with  mightier  forces.  There  was  something  in  him — in 
his  look,  in  the  cadences  of  his  voice,  in  his  solemn  and 
transparent  earnestness — which  brought  irresistibly  home 
to  those  who  looked  on  him  and  listened  to  him  a  sense  of 


188  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

eternal  things.  Wesley,  says  Miss  Wedgwood,  "wrought 
in  his  hearers  such  a  sense  of  the  horror  of  evil,  of  its 
mysterious  closeness  to  the  human  soul,  and  of  the  need 
of  a  miracle  for  the  separation  of  the  two,  that  no  one 
perhaps  could  suddenly  receive  without  some  violent 
physical  effect.'" 

But  this  does  not  cover  the  whole  case.  The  truth  is, 
Wesley  saw  with  Dante-like  vision,  and  had  the  power  to 
make  others  see,  that  supreme  fact  of  the  spiritual  world, 
the  close  relation  in  which  the  human  soul  stands  to  God ; 
how  near  God  is  to  man ;  in  what  relation  man's  sin 
stands  to  God's  purity,  man's  need  to  God's  pity,  and 
all  man's  acts  to  God's  judgment.  So  from  the  dim, 
remote,  far-off  spaces  of  the  heavens,  God  appeared  to 
Wesley's  hearers,  a  Figure  loving  and  awful,  and  above 
all,  at  the  very  touch !  And  as  Wesley  preached,  and 
there  suddenly  broke  upon  his  hearers  this  sense  of  the 
eternal  world  with  its  tremendous  issues,  of  sin  and  its 
infinite  guilt,  of  God  and  the  relation  of  the  soul  to  Him — 
what  wonder  that  the  shaken  souls  of  his  hearers  not 
seldom  communicated  their  tremors  to  the  bodies  that 
held  them ! 

Many  human  elements  were,  no  doubt,  amongst  the 
forces  which  produced  these  scenes :  imposture,  hysteria, 
the  contagion  of  strong  emotions,  the  fire  of  excitement 
burning  in  the  senses.  But  when  allowance  has  been 
made  for  these  there  is  a  residuum  of  strange  fact  which 
they  do  not  explain.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  body 
and  soul  are  strangely  interknitted ;  their  boundaries 
cannot  be  exactly  defined ;  they  act  and  react  on  each 
other.  A  wasting  disease  affects  every  mood  of  the  mind. 
The  wine  of  a  strong  and  deep  emotion,  poured  through 
the  feelings,  thrills  every  physical  organ.  And  spiritual 
emotions,  since  they  awaken  at  a  greater  depth,  and  beat 
with  a  stronger  pulse  than  any  other  of  which  the  human 
soul  is  capable,  may  well,  when  once  they  are  aroused, 
affect  with  strange  force  the  body  itself.  Only  those  will 
doubt  this  who  have  never  felt  the  awe  of  deep  spiritual 
feeling. 

It  can  be  easily  understood  how  these  strange  pheno- 
mena supplied  those  who  hated  the  whole  movement  with 
new  arguments  against  it.  They  constituted  a  loud,  wide- 


WESLEY  AS    A    PREACHER  189 

spread,  and  clamorous  scandal.  But  at  least  they  adver- 
tised the  revival.  They  filled  all  minds  with  wonder  and 
all  lips  with  gossip.  A  strange  force  seemed  to  have 
broken  out  of  the  unseen  world  on  mankind.  It  was 
easy  to  suspect  the  new  movement,  to  vehemently  dis- 
like it,  to  argue  loudly  against  it.  It  was  not  possible  to 
ignore  it ! 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    GREAT    ITINERANT 

WESLEY  quickly  came  to  his  natural  place  as  the  leader 
and  representative  of  the  new  movement.  He  was  not 
merely  its  theologian  and  statesman,  its  scholar,  its  chief 
controversialist ;  he  was  its  foremost  and  most  diligent, 
if  not  its  greatest,  preacher.  His  career  as  an  evange- 
list, now  in  full  progress,  deserves  some  study,  for  there 
is  no  other,  for  range,  continuity,  and  permanent  results, 
to  approach  it  in  modern  history. 

Wesley  preached  his  first  open-air  sermon  on  April  2, 
1739,  and  his  last  at  Winchelsea  on  October  7,  1790. 
Betwixt  those  two  dates  lie  fifty-one  years,  filled  with  a 
strain  of  toil  almost  without  parallel  in  human  experi- 
ence. At  the  beginning  of  this  period  his  two  comrades, 
Whitefield  and  his  brother  Charles,  were  in  gifts  and  zeal 
his  peers.  Charles  Wesley  married  in  1749,  and  his  work 
as  an  itinerant  shrank  at  once  to  very  narrow  limits. 
Whitefield  died  in  America  on  September  30,  1756. 
Wesley  thus,  in  what  may  be  called  the  full  strain  of 
aggressive  work,  exceeded  his  brother  by  more  than  forty 
years,  and  Whitefield  by  more  than  thirty.  His  work, 
it  may  be  added,  was  of  a  more  concentrated  type  than 
that  of  either  of  his  two  comrades.  In  mere  scale  of 
labour  Wesley  far  outran  Whitefield.  Whitefield  preached, 
it  is  computed,  18,000  sermons,  more  than  ten  a  week 
for  thirty-four  years  of  evangelistic  life.  Wesley  preached 
42,400  sermons  after  his  return  from  Georgia,  an  average 
of  more  than  fifteen  a  week ;  and  he  travelled,  it  is  com- 
puted, in  his  itinerant  work,  more  than  250,000  miles. 
Wesley,  in  a  word,  was  a  man  who,  if  he  had  the  brain 
of  a  statesman,  the  culture  of  a  scholar,  the  message  of 
an  apostle,  had  also  the  glowing  and  tireless  zeal  of  a 
preaching  friar  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

His  work  throughout  these  fifty-one  years  was  of  an 

190 


THE    GREAT    ITINERANT  191 

unvarying  type.  It  was  the  proclamation  to  the  crowd, 
wherever  he  could  gather  one — on  hill-side  or  river-bank, 
in  the  village  market-place  or  under  a  church  roof — of 
the  unchanged  and  unchanging  message  of  Christ's 
Gospel.  Wesley  never  wearied,  never  faltered,  never 
doubted,  never  turned  aside.  His  comrades  lagged  be- 
hind him  ;  his  friends  forsook  him ;  a  world  of  angry 
controversy  eddied  about  his  name  and  character.  None 
of  these  things  affected  Wesley.  The  clear  flame  of  his 
zeal  burned  long,  burned  undimmed,  burned  still,  when 
even  the  fire  of  life  turned  to  ashes. 

Who  plots  on  a  map  of  England  Wesley's  preaching 
tours  becomes  sensible  of  certain  constant  features  in  the 
lines  along  which  these  tours  moved.  They  did  not 
cover  the  whole  of  England.  They  ran  in  certain  well- 
marked  geographical  curves.  In  his  evangelistic  cam- 
paigns Wesley — to  borrow  the  term  biology  of  the  soldier 
—had  three  bases — London,  Bristol,  and  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne.  They  formed,  roughly,  an  isosceles  triangle ;  and 
Wesley's  tours — allowing  for  a  certain  percentage  of  oscil- 
lation— ran  to  and  fro  betwixt  these  three  points.  He 
must  have  known  the  road  westward  from  London  to 
Bristol,  and  northward  from  London  to  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne,  as  a  city  postman  knows  his  round.  Why  did 
Wesley  keep  so  obstinately  to  these  particular  lines  ? 
Why  did  he  leave  such  wide  spaces  of  England  practi- 
cally unvisited? 

A  little  consideration  supplies  the  explanation.  The 
chief  feature  of  English  history  from  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  is  the  rise  of  the  great  manufacturing 
towns.  In  the  last  fifty  years  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  population  of  England  increased  fifty  per  cent.  This 
was  the  result  of  the  industrial  revival,  which  changed 
the  whole  life  of  England  and  gave  to  her  the  leadership 
of  commercial  Europe.  Now,  Wesley's  preaching  tours 
followed  roughly  the  lines  of  England's  industrial  develop- 
ment. He  travelled  where  population  was  thickest.  He 
left  almost  unvisited  the  wide  green  fields  of  rural  dis- 
tricts, with  their  slow-moving,  scanty  population.  But 
where  the  stream  of  life  was  deepest ;  where  tiny  villages 
were  growing  into  busy  cities ;  where  tall  chimneys  filled 
the  skies  with  their  blackness,  there  Wesley  preached 


192  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

and  toiled.  His  mission  began  with  the  miners  of  Kings- 
wood.  It  ran,  almost  throughout  his  whole  career,  amongst 
the  crowds  of  the  manufacturing  cities.  Wesley  thus — 
with  perhaps  unconscious  wisdom  —  was  baptizing  with 
divine  forces  the  new  fermenting  life  of  his  day. 

His  tours,  it  may  be  added,  were  planned  out  in  ad- 
vance with  great  minuteness — the  places  he  was  to  visit, 
the  hours  at  which  he  would  arrive,  the  services  to  be 
held.  There  were  no  wasted  moments,  no  omitted  oppor- 
tunities, no  intervals  of  rest.  And  Wesley  carried  out  his 
"appointments"  with  iron  resolution.  Nor  storm,  nor 
distance,  nor  weariness  availed  to  intercept  his  planet- 
like  course.  His  custom  was  to  preach  in  the  morning 
at  five  o'clock,  or  even  earlier.  He  then  mounted  his 
horse,  or  entered  his  chaise,  and  rode  or  drove  to  the 
next  place  he  had  appointed,  where  another  great  crowd 
waited  for  him.  So  throughout  all  the  hours  of  the  day, 
and  all  the  days  of  the  week,  and  all  the  weeks  of  the 
year,  for  a  long  half-century.  He  lived  like  a  soldier  on 
a  campaign — lightly  equipped,  and  ready  at  a  moment 
to  march.  But  for  him  it  was  a  campaign  of  fifty 
years ! 

And  yet  he  was  a  man  of  exquisite  neatness  and  order, 
with  the  delight  of  a  scholar  in  having  everything  perfect 
about  him.  "  In  his  chamber  and  study,  during  his  winter 
months  of  residence  in  London,  not  a  book  was  misplaced 
or  even  a  scrap  of  paper  left  unheeded.  He  could  enjoy 
every  convenience  of  life ;  and  yet  he  acted  hi  the  smallest 
things  like  a  man  who  was  not  to  continue  an  hour  in  one 
place.  He  appeared  at  home  in  every  place — settled, 
satisfied,  and  happy ;  and  yet  was  ready  any  hour  to  take 
a  journey  of  a  thousand  miles." 

The  mere  physical  strain  of  such  a  career  can  hardly  be 
estimated.  The  incessant  travelling  under  the  wet  and 
changeful  English  skies,  and  on  the  rough  English  roads 
of  that  day,  was  a  stupendous  toil.  Wesley  travelled 
usually  4500  miles  a  year,  mostly  on  horseback,  and  this 
down  to  nearly  his  seventieth  year.  And  while  travelling 
at  this  rate  he  generally  preached  two,  three — sometimes 
even  four — sermons  a  day.  He  lived  in  crowds.  His  life, 
for  so  many  hours  each  day,  was  full  of  noise,  hurry,  and 
agitation.  And  yet  in  all  this  incessant  travelling  and 


THE    GREAT    ITINERANT  193 

preaching  he  carried  with  him  the  studious  and  meditative 
habits  of  the  philosopher  ! 

His  light,  compact  figure  had  the  consistency  and 
toughness  of  so  much  india-rubber.  Nothing  tired  him  ; 
few  things  disturbed  him.  He  was  as  insensible  to  vicis- 
situdes of  weather  as  a  North  Sea  pilot.  There  was  not 
a  soft  fibre,  not  an  unhealthy  nerve  or  a  relaxed  muscle, 
not  an  ounce  of  unnecessary  nesh,  in  his  wonderful  little 
body.  Every  waking  moment  had  its  task,  and  no  one 
ever  gave  fewer  hours  to  sleep  than  did  John  Wesley. 

He  records  that  he  rode  in  one  day  a  distance  of  more 
than  ninety  miles  between  Bawtry  and  Epworth ;  and,  at 
the  end,  "  was  little  more  tired  than  when  he  rose  in  the 
morning."  In  Scotland,  he  reached  Cupar,  "  after  travel- 
ling near  ninety  miles,"  and  "  was  not  in  the  least  tired." 
"  Many  a  rough  journey,"  says  Wesley,  "  have  I  had  before, 
but  one  like  this  I  never  had,  between  wind  and  rain,  and 
ice  and  snow,  and  driving  sleet  and  piercing  cold."  Under 
such  harsh  conditions  he  had  ridden  280  miles  in  six  days. 

There  is  something  almost  amusing  in  the  brevity,  and 
more  than  philosophic  coolness,  with  which  Wesley  records 
his  experiences  as  a  traveller,  in  the  wild  weather,  and  on 
the  rough  roads  of  that  time.  He  gives  us  little  vignettes 
of  the  scenery  and  weather — snow  landscapes,  pictures  of 
dripping  skies,  of  bitter,  blowing  winds — in  spite  of  which 
he  is  seen  struggling  on  indomitably  to  his  appointments. 
He  is  too  busy,  perhaps,  to  attend  to  the  weather  very 
much,  or  to  describe  his  own  feelings  about  it.  He  tells 
the  simple,  matter-of-fact  story  in  the  most  matter-of-fact 
way.  Here  is  one  of  his  little  weather  vignettes : — 

"The  hills  were  covered  with  snow,  as  in  the  depth  of  winter. 
About  two  we  came  to  Trewint,  wet  and  weary  enough,  having 
been  battered  by  the  rain  and  hail  for  some  hours.  I  preached  in 
the  evening  to  many  more  than  the  house  would  contain,  on  the 
happiness  of  him  whose  sins  are  forgiven." 

A  companion  picture,  which  may  well  make  the  soft- 
fibred  and  comfort-loving  modern  reader  shiver,  comes  a 
little  later : — 

"  There  was  so  much  snow  about  Boroughbridge  that  we  could 
go  on  but  very  slowly,  insomuch  that  the  night  overtook  us  when 
we  wanted  six  or  seven  miles  to  the  place  where  we  designed  to 

N 


194  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

lodge.  But  we  pushed  on,  at  a  venture,  across  the  moor,  and, 
about  eight,  came  safe  to  Sandhutton.  .  .  .  We  found  the  roads 
abundantly  worse  than  they  had  been  the  day  before ;  not  only 
because  the  snows  were  deeper,  which  made  the  causeways  in 
many  places  unpassable — and  turnpike-roads  were  not  known  in 
these  parts  of  England  till  years  after — but  likewise  because  the 
hard  frost,  succeeding  the  thaw,  had  made  all  the  ground  like 
glass.  We  were  often  obliged  to  walk,  it  being  impossible  to  ride, 
and  our  horses  several  times  fell  down  while  we  were  leading 
them,  but  not  once  while  we  were  riding  them,  during  the  whole 
journey.  It  was  past  eight  before  we  got  to  Gateshead  Fell, 
which  appeared  a  pathless  waste  of  white.  The  snow  filling  up 
and  covering  all  the  roads,  we  were  at  a  loss  how  to  proceed, 
when  an  honest  man  of  Newcastle  overtook  and  guided  us  safe 
into  the  town. 

"  Many  a  rough  journey  have  I  had  before,  but  one  like  this  I 
never  had  ;  between  wind,  and  hail,  and  rain,  and  ice,  and  snow 
and  driving  sleet,  and  piercing  cold.  But  it  is  past ;  those  days 
will  return  no  more,  and  are  therefore  as  though  they  had  never 
been." 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Wesley  had  not  always  the 
exhilaration  of  admiring  crowds  to  inspire  him.  Some 
of  his  open-air  services  were  begun  under  circumstances 
which  might  well  have  taxed  the  courage  of  an  apostle — 
if  only  because  the  human  conditions  were  so  chilling. 
Thus  he  describes  an  open-air  meeting  in  Scotland : — 

"  At  eleven  I  went  into  the  main  street,  and  began  speaking  to 
a  congregation  of  two  men  and  two  women  These  were  soon 
joined  by  above  twenty  children.  ...  At  six  William  Coward 
and  I  went  to  the  Market-house.  We  stayed  some  time,  and 
neither  man,  woman,  nor  child  came  near  us.  At  length  I  began 
singing  a  Scotch  psalm,  and  fifteen  or  twenty  people  came  within 
hearing,  but  with  great  circumspection,  keeping  their  distance,  as 
though  they  knew  not  what  might  follow." 

This,  it  may  be  added,  was  on  his  third  visit  to  Scotland, 
when  he  was  a  man  of  fame. 

An  example  of  how  Wesley  attacked  a  great  town  is 
found  in  the  story  of  how  he  conducted  his  first  service 
in  Newcastle : — 

"  At  seven  I  walked  down  to  Sandgate,  the  poorest  and  most 
contemptible  part  of  the  town  and,  standing  at  the  end  of  the 
street  with  John  Taylor,  began  to  sing  the  Hundredth  Psalm. 


THE   GREAT   ITINERANT  195 

Three  or  four  people  came  out  to  see  what  was  the  matter ;  who 
soon  increased  to  four  or  five  hundred.  I  suppose  there  might  be 
twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  before  I  had  done  preaching  ;  to  whom 
I  applied  those  solemn  words :  '  He  was  wounded  for  our  trans- 
gressions.' Observing  the  people,  when  I  had  done,  to  stand 
gaping  and  staring  upon  me,  with  the  most  profound  astonish- 
ment, I  told  them  :  '  If  you  desire  to  know  who  I  am,  my  name 
is  John  Wesley.  At  five  in  the  evening,  with  God's  help,  I  de- 
sign to  preach  here  again.'  At  five,  the  hill  on  which  I  designed 
to  preach  was  covered  from  the  top  to  the  bottom.  I  never  saw 
so  large  a  number  of  people  gathered  together,  either  in  Moorfields 
or  at  Kenniugton  Common.  I  knew  it  was  not  possible  for  the 
one-half  to  hear,  although  my  voice  was  then  strong  and  clear ; 
and  I  stood  so  as  to  have  them  all  in  view,  as  they  were  ranged 
on  the  side  of  the  hill.  The  Word  of  God  which  I  set  before 
them  was :  '  I  will  heal  their  backsliding ;  I  will  love  them 
freely.'  After  preaching,  the  poor  people  were  ready  to  tread  me 
under  foot,  out  of  pure  love  and  kindness.  It  was  some  time 
before  I  could  possibly  get  out  of  the  press.  I  then  went  back 
another  way  than  I  came ;  but  several  people  were  got  to  our  inn 
before  me  ;  by  whom  I  was  vehemently  importuned  to  stay  with 
them,  at  least,  a  few  days ;  or,  at  least,  one  day  more.  But  I 
could  not  consent,  having  given  my  word  to  be  at  Birstal,  with 
God's  help,  on  Tuesday  night." 

Wesley,  however,  had  to  face  not  merely  stormy  skies 
and  weary,  interminable  journeys.  He  had  to  endure  an 
amazing  amount  of  obloquy  and  public  abuse,  hardening 
not  seldom  into  gusts  of  stern  and  cruel  persecution.  The 
England  of  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
brutal  and  untaught.  Its  temper  was  cruel;  its  very 
sports  were  marked  by  an  almost  incredible  savagery. 
And  the  crowds  of  that  day  found  as  much  pleasure  in 
harrying  an  unfortunate  Methodist  preacher  as  in  watch- 
ing a  prize-fight  or  hi  baiting  a  bear.  Wesley  tells  the 
story  of  these  persecutions  in  his  own  brief,  composed 
fashion,  without  comment  or  complaint;  but  behind  his 
calm  syllables  are  records  of  human  brutality — and  of 
human  courage — not  easily  paralleled. 

At  Wednesbury,  for  example,  there  was  a  whole  cycle 
of  persecution,  which  stretched  from  June  1743  to 
February  1744.  For  these  eight  months  the  town  was 
practically — so  far  as  Methodists  were  concerned — under 
mob-rule.  The  magistrates  and  clergy  conspired  with  the 


196  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

rabble  against  Wesley's  followers.  They  suffered  almost 
as  many  wrongs  as  did  the  Jews  at  Kischineff,  under 
Russian  rule.  They  were  plundered,  beaten,  hunted 
through  the  cities,  and  outraged  almost  at  the  pleasure 
of  the  mob.  Wesley  sums  up  the  story : — 

"Ever  since  June  20  last,  the  mob  of  Walsal,  Darlaston,  and 
Wednesbury,  hired  for  that  purpose  by  their  betters,  have  broke 
open  their  poor  neighbours'  houses  at  their  pleasure,  by  night  and 
by  day ;  extorted  money  from  the  few  that  had  it ;  took  away  or 
destroyed  their  victuals  and  goods ;  beat  and  wounded  their  bodies  ; 
threatened  their  lives ;  abused  their  women  (some  in  a  manner  too 
horrible  to  name),  and  openly  declared  they  would  destroy  every 
Methodist  in  the  country ;  the  Christian  country  where  his 
Majesty's  innocent  and  loyal  subjects  have  been  so  treated  for 
eight  months,  and  are  now,  by  their  wanton  persecutors,  publicly 
branded  for  rioters  and  incendiaries." 

A  favourite  and  very  deadly  trick  was  to  seize  and 
impress  for  the  Army  or  Navy  the  more  active  of 
Wesley's  followers  and  preachers.  The  story  of  Thomas 
Beard  deserves  to  be  told  as  it  stands  in  Wesley's 
Journal : — 

"  I  left  Newcastle,  and  in  the  afternoon  met  John  Nelson,  at 
Durham,  with  Thomas  Beard ;  another  quiet  and  peaceable  man, 
who  had  lately  been  torn  from  his  trade,  and  wife,  and  children, 
and  sent  away  as  a  soldier ;  that  is,  banished  from  all  that  was 
near  and  dear  to  him,  and  constrained  to  dwell  among  lions,  for 
no  other  crime,  either  committed  or  pretended,  than  that  of  calling 
sinners  to  repentance.  But  his  soul  was  in  nothing  terrified  by 
his  adversaries.  Yet  the  body,  after  a  while,  sunk  under  its 
burden.  He  was  then  lodged  in  the  hospital,  at  Newcastle,  where 
he  still  praised  God  continually.  His  fever  increasing,  he  was  let 
blood.  His  arm  festered,  mortified,  and  was  cut  off;  two  or  three 
days  after  which  God  signed  his  discharge,  and  called  him  up  to 
his  eternal  home." 

Of  Wesley's  personal  experiences  some  examples  deserve 
to  be  given : — 

"I  made  haste  to  Goston's-green,  near  Birmingham,  where  I 
had  appointed  to  preach  at  six,  But  it  was  dangerous  for  any 
who  stood  to  hear,  for  the  stones  and  dirt  were  flying  from  every 
side,  almost  without  intermission,  for  near  an  hour.  However, 


THE   GREAT    ITINERANT  197 

very  few  persons  went  away.  I  afterwards  met  the  Society  and 
exhorted  them,  in  spite  of  men  and  devils,  to  continue  in  the  grace 
of  God." 

A  still  more  exciting  experience  awaited  him  a  little 
after  at  Falmouth : — 

"  I  rode  to  Falmouth.  Almost  as  soon  as  I  was  set  down  the 
house  was  beset  on  all  sides  by  an  innumerable  multitude  of 
people.  A  louder  or  more  confused  noise  could  hardly  be  at  the 
taking  of  a  city.  The  rabble  roared  with  all  their  throats,  '  Bring 
out  the  Canorum.  Where  is  the  CanorumV  (an  unmeaning  word 
which  the  Cornish  generally  use  instead  of  '  Methodist ').  No 
answer  being  given,  they  quickly  forced  open  the  outer  door  and 
filled  the  passage.  Only  a  wainscot  partition  was  between  us, 
which  was  not  likely  to  stand  long.  I  immediately  took  down  a 
large  looking-glass  which  hung  against  it,  supposing  the  whole 
side  would  fall  in  at  once.  When  they  began  their  work,  with 
abundance  of  bitter  imprecations,  poor  Kitty  was  utterly  astonished 
and  cried  out  '  O,  sir,  what  must  we  do  ? '  I  said,  '  We  must 
pray.'  Indeed  at  that  time,  to  all  appearances,  our  lives  were  not 
worth  an  hour's  purchase.  She  asked,  '  But,  sir,  is  it  not  better 
for  you  to  hide  yourself,  to  get  into  the  closet?'  I  answered, 
'  No ;  it  is  best  for  me  to  stand  just  where  I  am.'  Among  those 
without  were  the  crews  of  some  privateers  which  were  lately  come 
into  the  harbour.  Some  of  these,  being  angry  at  the  slowness  of 
the  rest,  thrust  them  away,  and  coming  up  all  together  set  their 
shoulders  to  the  inner  door,  and  cried  out,  'Avast,  lads,  avast.' 
Away  went  all  the  hinges  at  once  and  the  door  fell  back  into  the 
room.  I  stepped  forward  at  once  into  the  midst  of  them  and 
said,  '  Here  I  am.  Which  of  you  has  anything  to  say  to  me?  To 
which  of  you  have  I  done  any  wrong  1  To  you  ?  or  you  1  or  you  ? ' 
I  continued  speaking  till  I  came,  bareheaded  as  I  was  (for  I 
purposely  left  my  hat  that  they  might  all  see  my  face),  into  the 
middle  of  the  street,  and  then,  raising  my  voice,  said,  '  Neighbours, 
countrymen,  do  you  desire  to  hear  me  speak?'  They  cried, 
vehemently,  '  Yes,  yes.  He  shall  speak.  He  shall.  Nobody 
shall  hinder  him.' 

"  I  never  saw  before-1— no,  not  at  Walsal  itself — the  hand  of  God 
so  plainly  shown  as  here.  There  I  had  many  companions  who 
were  willing  to  die  with  me,  here  not  a  friend  but  one  simple  girl, 
who,  likewise,  was  hurried  away  from  me  in  an  instant,  as  soon  as 

ever  she  came  out  of  Mrs.  B 'a  door.  There  I  received  some 

blows,  lost  part  of  my  clothes,  and  was  covered  over  with  dirt. 
Here,  although  the  hands  of  perhaps  some  hundreds  of  people  were 


198  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

lifted  up  to  strike  or  throw,  yet  they  were  one  and  all  stopped  in 
the  midway,  so  that  not  a  man  touched  me  with  one  of  his  fingers, 
neither  was  anything  thrown,  from  first  to  last,  so  that  I  had  not 
even  a  speck  of  dirt  on  my  clothes.  Who  can  deny  that  God 
heareth  the  prayer,  or  that  He  hath  all  power  in  heaven  and 
earth?" 

Under  such  conditions  as  these  Wesley  still  pressed  on, 
with  unresting  swiftness,  in  his  great  work.  The  area  of 
his  labours  widened.  He  went  north  to  Scotland,  mak- 
ing no  less  than  twenty-one  tours  through  Scottish  towns 
and  villages.  He  crossed  St.  George's  Channel  forty-two 
times,  and  put  the  impress  of  his  strong  personality  and 
ardent  zeal  on  Ireland.  He  drew  comrades  to  his  side, 
found  helpers  and  preachers  amongst  his  converts,  and 
became  not  a  solitary  combatant,  but  the  general  of  an 
army.  And  the  business  of  preaching — constant  in  strain, 
vast  in  scale,  and  intense  in  ardour  as  this  was — formed 
only  part  of  Wesley's  work.  Side  by  side  with  these 
preaching  tours  is  an  unbroken  chain  of  other  forms  of 
work.  Great  controversies,  to  be  described  hereafter,  rose, 
ran  their  course,  and  died ;  persecutions  were  endured  and 
forgotten ;  churches  were  built.  A  thousand  wild  scandals 
broke  on  Wesley  himself.  His  friends  fell  from  him,  his 
comrades  often  proved  faithless.  He  was  pelted  by  the 
crowds,  sneered  at  by  the  educated,  frowned  on  by  the 
clergy,  and  not  seldom  the  very  men  who  were  plucked 
from  sin  and  death  turned  against  him.  His  brother 
Charles  married  a  well-to-do  wife,  and  gathered  about 
himself  the  comforts  of  a  settled  home.  Whitefield  was 
absorbed  in  his  orphanage  scheme  in  America. 

The  one  steadfast,  unshakable  soul  who  never  doubted, 
never  faltered,  never  grew  discouraged,  was  Wesley !  He 
was  an  Itinerant  Apostle  almost  to  the  hour  of  his  death. 
And  he  stamped  the  characteristics  of  his  own  life  for 
all  time  on  the  Church  he  founded.  It  is  the  Church  of 
an  itinerant  ministry. 

Later,  Wesley's  work  took  a  new  shape — a  shape  more 
wearisome  than  even  his  interminable  journeys — and 
infinitely  more  distressing.  False  doctrines  crept  in 
among  his  followers ;  strange  forms  of  immorality  mani- 
fested themselves ;  spiritual  life  grew  faint.  During  the 
latter  years  of  his  apostolate  Wesley  was  incessantly 


THE   GREAT   ITINERANT  199 

"purging"  his  Societies,  casting  out  unworthy  members 
and  enforcing  wholesome  discipline.  He  was,  in  a  word, 
building  a  Church  without  knowing  it  or  intend  ing  it. 
And,  through  all  the  dust  and  tumult  of  his  preaching 
tours,  who  watches  can  see  the  lines  of  a  great  Church 
emerging,  as  will  be  described  later.  It  is  a  Church  not 
shaped  in  the  calm  of  a  philosopher's  study,  but  in  the 
fires  of  conflict  and  controversy.  Each  new  feature  of  the 
great  structure  is  wrought  at  the  bidding  of  necessity,  and 
to  meet  some  visible  and  urgent  need.  It  is  tested  by 
the  stern  and  hard  logic  of  facts. 

And  when  the  tale  of  Wesley's  work  as  an  itinerant 
preacher  has  been  told,  great  spaces  in  his  life  are  still 
left  untouched  and  undescribed.  He  was  a  student,  an 
administrator,  the  general  of  a  great  campaign,  as  well  as 
a  preacher;  and  if  he  had  been  none  01  these,  his  mere 
correspondence,  his  reading,  his  literary  productions,  were 
sufficient  to  fill  to  the  brim  any  ordinary  human  life.  But 
when  all  these  separate  forms  of  industry — as  preacher, 
student,  traveller,  administrator,  controversialist,  writer — 
are  crowded  into  the  tiny  curve  of  one  little  human  life 
the  sum -total  of  energy  they  represent  is  nothing  less 
than  amazing. 

How  did  he  do  it  ?  He  wrote,  he  read,  he  corresponded, 
he  preached;  he  was  the  unordained  bishop  of  a  great 
spiritual  flock.  He  was  always  in  the  saddle  or  in  the 
pulpit — and  he  was  never  hi  a  hurry !  What  was  his 
secret  ? 

The  truth  is  his  toils  as  a  preacher  were  interspaced 
with  frequent  islets  of  leisure.  This  man,  who  seemed  to 
live  in  crowds,  had  yet  in  his  life  wide  spaces  of  solitude. 
He  preached  to  his  five-o'clock-m-the-morning  congre- 
gation, then  mounted  his  horse,  or  stepped  into  his  chaise, 
and  rode  or  drove  off  to  the  next  gathering.  Betwixt  the 
two  crowds  he  had  hours  of  solitude — to  think,  to  read,  to 
plan.  He  was  the  master,  it  may  be  added,  of  the  peril- 
ous art  of  reading  on  horseback.  His  work  itself  was  a 
physical  tonic.  Preaching  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning 
may,  perhaps,  seem  an  heroic  form  of  diligence ;  as  a 
matter  of  fact  Wesley  proved  it  to  be  the  most  healthy 
variety  of  physical  exercise !  Preaching  in  the  open-air, 
with  the  free  winds  of  heaven  about  him,  was — looked 


200  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

at  from  the  physical  side — a  very  wholesome  form  of 
gymnastics. 

These  open-air  preachings  find  their  best  record  in 
Wesley's  Journal.  The  famous  Journal  consists  in  the 
main  of  brief  notes  of  sermons  and  texts,  with  tiny,  swift 
vignettes  of  the  crowds  that  listened  to  them — their  size, 
their  behaviour,  the  manner  in  which  the  discourse  affected 
them,  &c.  These  accounts  are  curiously  condensed  and 
vivid.  They  are  written,  so  to  speak,  in  mental  as  well  as 
literal  shorthand.  Wesley  sees  his  crowd  for  a  moment, 
compresses  the  story  of  the  sermon  and  its  results  into  a 
sentence,  adds  a  pious  wish  for  a  blessing,  and  then  hurries 
on  to  the  next  crowd  with  abrupt  haste.  And  that  note 
of  hurrying  speed,  that  breathless  economy  of  description, 
is  characteristic  of  the  whole  Journal.  Then  come,  thrust 
in  betwixt  these  notes  of  sermons  and  texts  and  crowds, 
stories  of  strange  conversions,  of  puzzling  spiritual  experi- 
ences, of  odd  characters  met  and  of  odd  talks  with  them, 
with  notes  on  books,  scenery,  events. 

One  does  not  easily  realise,  as  the  eye  runs  over  these 
compressed  and  breathless  sentences,  what  intense  toil 
lies  behind  them.  To  talk  to  a  crowd  of  5000  people — 
few  living  speakers  know  what  that  means :  the  expendi- 
ture of  nervous  force,  the  strain  on  throat  and  brain,  on 
body  and  soul.  But  Wesley  did  this,  not  only  every  day, 
but  often  twice  and  three  times  in  a  day.  He  did  it  for 
fifty  years,  and  the  strain  did  not  kill  him ! 

Gladstone's  Midlothian  campaign  in  1 879  is  famous  in 
history ;  but  it  was  confined  to  a  little  patch  of  Scotland ; 
it  lasted  fifteen  days,  and  represented  perhaps  twenty 
speeches.  But  Wesley  carried  on  his  campaign  on  a 
scale  which  leaves  Mr.  Gladstone's  performances  dwarfed 
into  insignificance.  He  did  it  on  the  great  stage  of  the 
three  kingdoms,  and  he  maintained  it  without  a  break 
for  more  than  fifty  years ! 

Mr.  Gladstone,  at  Gravesend,  in  1871,  spoke  for  two 
hours  to  an  audience  of  20,000,  and  Mr.  John  Morley, 
his  astonished  biographer,  declares  the  speech  to  be, 
both  physically  and  intellectually,  the  greatest  achieve- 
ment of  Mr.  Gladstone's  career.  But  for  Wesley  to 
address  audiences  as  vast,  and  in  circumstances  as  trying, 
was  an  ordinary  experience,  and  one  which  was  repeated 


THE    GREAT    ITINERANT  201 

incessantly  to  extreme  old  age.  Gladstone  was  sixty-two 
years  old  when  he  delivered  his  Gravesend  speech.  When 
Wesley  was  of  the  same  age  his  Journal  is  packed  with 
records  like  this:  —  "Sunday,  August  10,  1766.  After 
prayers  had  been  read  in  the  church,  preached  in  the 
churchyard  to  a  large  congregation ;  at  i  P.M.  to  20,000 ; 
and  between  five  and  six  to  another  such  congregation. 
This  was  the  hardest  day's  work  I  have  had  since  I  left 
London,  being  obliged  to  speak  at  each  place  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  at  the  utmost  stretch  of  my  voice. 
But  my  strength  was  as  my  day." 

Seven  years  later  (August  23,  1773)  he  records: — 
"  Preached  at  Gwennap  pit  to  above  32,000,  the  largest 
assembly  I  ever  preached  to,  perhaps  the  first  time  that 
a  man  of  seventy  had  been  heard  by  30,000  persons  at 
once."  Wesley's  voice,  it  may  be  added,  must  have  far 
outranged  Gladstone's.  He  writes  in  his  Journal,  under 
date  April  5,  1752: — "About  one  I  preached  at  Bristol. 
Observing  that  several  sat  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
hill,  I  afterwards  asked  one  to  measure  the  ground,  and 
we  found  that  it  was  seven  score  yards  from  where  I 
stood,  yet  the  people  heard  perfectly.  I  did  not  think  any 
human  voice  could  have  reached  so  far." 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  Wesley  preached  more 
sermons,  rode  more  miles,  worked  more  hours,  printed 
more  books,  and  influenced  more  lives  than  any  other 
Englishman  of  his  age,  or  perhaps  of  any  age.  And  the 
performance  did  not  even  tire  him!  In  1773  he  writes: 
"  I  am  seventy-three  years  old,  and  far  abler  to  preach 
than  I  was  at  twenty-three."  Ten  years  later  this  amazing 
old  man  writes,  "  I  have  entered  into  the  eighty-third  year 
of  my  age.  I  am  a  wonder  to  myself.  I  am  never  tired, 
either  with  preaching,  writing,  or  travelling." 

In  his  addresses  to  crowds,  it  must  be  remembered, 
Wesley  was  dealing  with  the  most  awful  themes;  he 
roused  the  deepest  emotions  of  his  hearers.  And  when 
he  had  lifted  one  vast  multitude  of  men  and  women  up 
to  some  high  and  intense  mood  of  religious  feeling  he 
passed  from  it  to  hurry  to  some  other  crowd  and  worked 
the  same  miracle  there.  He  himself  maintained  a  strange 
calm — a  calm  which  represented  the  equipoise  of  great 
emotions,  not  their  absence — through  all  these  services 


202  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

But  the  emotions  which  his  words  kindled  in  the  listening 
multitudes  were  often  of  tremendous  intensity.  He  was 
somehow  the  instrument  and  channel  of  strange  forces. 
He  would  hold  a  vast  multitude  of  English  peasants  and 
artisans  in  fixed,  unbreathing,  and  almost  awful  stillness. 
Suddenly  a  wave  of  overpowering  feeling  would  sweep 
over  his  hearers,  and  men  would  fall  as  if  suddenly  struck 
by  a  thunderbolt  under  his  words  Often  he  records  that 
while  preaching  he  had  to  stop  to  sing  or  pray,  to  allow 
the  emotions  of  his  hearers  to  express  themselves.  He 
gives  many  instances  of  the  effect — instant,  visible,  and 
dramatic — of  his  sermons. 

For  the  gathering  of  these  crowds  Wesley  employed 
none  of  the  familiar  modem  devices.  There  were  no 
advertisements,  no  local  committees,  no  friendly  news- 
papers, no  attractions  of  great  choirs.  It  is  a  puzzle  still 
to  know  how  the  crowds  were  induced  to  assemble,  for 
Wesley  gives  no  hints  of  any  organisation  employed.  His 
hearers  seemed  to  wait  for  him,  to  spring  up  before  him 
as  if  at  the  signal  of  some  mysterious  whisper  coming  out 
of  space.  Wesley's  familiar  habit  was  to  preach  every 
morning  at  five  o'clock,  and  he  was  often  awakened  long 
before  that  hour  by  the  voices,  sometimes  by  the  hymns, 
of  the  multitude  already  gathered.  How  did  he  succeed 
in  gathering  in  the  grey  dawn,  and  often  while  the 
stars  yet  hung  pale  in  the  sky,  such  crowds  to  listen  to 
him? 

Who  reads  Wesley's  Journals  and  Letters  during  this 
period  finds  in  them  one  most  significant  change.  Some- 
thing has  dropped  suddenly  out  of  Wesley's  life.  The 
old,  ever-gnawing  self-discontent  —  the  weariness,  the 
bitter  self-judgments,  the  sigh  of  defeated  longings — all 
are  gone !  These  for  fourteen  years  had  made  up  his 
"religion."  Now  everything  is  changed.  Here  is  a  man 
who  has  attained  certainty.  Religion  for  him  is  not  an 
aspiration.  It  is  an  attainment.  He  is  a  man  of  lowlier 
spirit  than  ever ;  and  yet  linked  to  the  humility  of  a  child 
is  the  exultant  confidence  of  a  great  saint — the  serene 
calm  of  a  soul  that  has  passed  beyond  conflict  and  attained 
victory.  His  serenity  of  temper,  which  no  care  could 
darken  and  no  anxiety  disturb,  is  nothing  less  than 
wonderful.  If  it  seems  to  fail  for  a  moment,  it  is  only 


THE    GREAT    ITINERANT  203 

for  a  moment,  and  to  Wesley's  own  surprise.     Thus  he 


"  I  had  often  wondered  at  myself  (and  sometimes  mentioned  it 
to  others)  that  ten  thousand  cares  of  various  kinds  were  no  more 
weight  or  burden  to  my  mind  than  ten  thousand  hairs  were  to 
my  head.  Perhaps  I  began  to  ascribe  something  of  this  to  my 
own  strength.  And  thence  it  might  be  that  on  Sunday  13 
strength  was  withheld  and  I  felt  what  it  was  to  be  troubled  about 
many  things.  One  and  another  hurrying  me  continually,  it 
seized  upon  my  spirit  more  and  more,  till  I  found  it  absolutely 
necessary  to  fly  for  my  life,  and  that  without  delay.  So  the  next 
day,  Monday  14,  I  took  horse  and  rode  away  for  Bristol.  As 
soon  as  we  came  to  the  house  at  Bristol  my  soul  was  lightened 
of  that  insufferable  weight  which  had  lain  upon  my  mind,  more  or 
less,  for  several  days." 

"  A  little  more  work,"  to  this  life  so  packed  and  crowded 
with  work,  was,  as  Wesley  says  in  another  passage  in  his 
Journal,  a  tonic  that  killed  care ! 

What  force  was  it  which  knitted  a  life  divided  amongst 
so  many  interests  into  unity;  which  gave  to  a  single 
human  will  a  resisting  power  as  of  hardened  steel ;  and 
which  made  a  fallible  man  a  force  so  tremendous,  and 
kept  him  at  a  level  so  high  ?  The  explanation  lies  in  the 
spiritual  realm.  Wesley  had  mastered  the  central  secret 
of  Christianity.  He  lived,  he  thought,  he  preached,  he 
wrote,  he  toiled,  under  the  undivided  empire  of  the  august 
motives,  the  divine  forces  of  religion. 


A    NEW    ORDER   OF    HELPERS 

WESLEY,  even  after  his  conversion,  had  all,  or  nearly  all, 
the  stubborn  prejudices  of  a  High  Churchman ;  and 
amongst  the  most  obstinate  of  these  was  the  prejudice 
against  a  layman  preaching.  To  touch  that  point,  as  he 
himself  said,  was  to  touch  the  apple  of  his  eye.  Only  a 
duly  ordained  divine,  linked  by  a  chain  of  many-centuried 
ordinations  to  the  Apostles  themselves,  had  the  right  to 
stand  in  the  pulpit  and  preach  to  his  fellow-men.  That 
a  mere  layman,  ordained  by  nobody,  should  mount  to 
that  sacred  eminence,  and  dare  with  secular  lips  to  in- 
terpret Scripture  to  his  fellow-men,  seemed  to  Wesley 
nothing  short  of  sacrilege.  He  felt,  as  he  contemplated 
that  spectacle,  as  a  Jewish  priest  would  have  felt  had  he 
seen  some  one  who  did  not  belong  to  the  tribe  of  Levi 
ministering  at  the  altar.  And  yet — such  is  the  satire  of 
history — Wesley  was  destined  to  found  a  Church  which 
employs  more  lay  preachers  and  employs  them  with 
greater  effect  and  honour,  than  any  other  Church  known 
to  history ! 

It  was  the  resistless  compulsion  of  facts — always  for  him 
the  highest  form  of  logic  —  which  vanquished  Wesley's 
prejudices.  His  work  took  a  range  and  scale  which  out- 
ran his  powers.  The  fast-multiplying  numbers  of  the 
converts  made  provision  for  their  oversight  imperative. 
He  must  have  helpers  and  associates.  At  first  a  few 
clergymen  of  spiritual  temper  stood  by  him ;  but  they 
were  only  few.  The  public  opinion  of  their  order,  too, 
was  against  them.  They  were  anchored  to  their  parishes. 
They  could  not  keep  pace  with  the  rush  of  Wesley's  work 
and  the  tidal  sweep  of  the  great  movement  he  represented. 
They  grew,  in  fact,  afraid  of  the  movement  and  of  the 
strange  forces  stirring  in  it.  Those  who  hated  the  work 
drew  comfort  from  the  reflection  that  it  hung — or  seemed 

204 


A   NEW    ORDER   OF    HELPERS  205 

to  hang — on  the  slender  thread  of  a  solitary  human 
life.  Only  a  single  pair  of  lips  had  to  be  silenced  by 
weariness,  or  sickness,  or  death,  and  all  the  tumult  of 
the  revival  would  be  hushed.  When  Wesley  died,  they 
believed,  his  work  would  disappear.  He  had  no  allies, 
and  could  have  no  successors.  But  Wesley  wrote  after- 
wards : — 

"  When  they  imagined  they  had  effectually  shut  the  door,  and 
locked  up  every  passage  whereby  any  help  could  come  to  two  or 
three  preachers,  weak  in  body  as  well  as  soul,  who  they  might 
reasonably  believe  would,  humanly  speaking,  wear  themselves  out 
in  a  short  time ;  when  they  had  gained  their  point,  by  securing 
(as  they  supposed)  all  the  men  of  learning  in  the  nation,  He  that 
sitteth  in  Heaven  laughed  them  to  scorn,  and  came  upon  them 
by  a  way  they  thought  not  of.  Out  of  the  stones  He  raised  up 
those  who  should  beget  children  to  Abraham.  We  had  no  more 
foresight  of  this  than  you.  Nay,  we  had  the  deepest  prejudices 
against  it,  until  we  could  not  but  own  that  God  gave  wisdom  from 
above  to  these  unlearned  and  ignorant  men,  so  that  the  work  of 
the  Lord  prospered  in  their  hands,  and  sinners  were  daily  con- 
verted to  God." l 

It  was,  in  advance,  one  of  the  certainties  of  the  revival 
that  Wesley  would  draw  about  himself  a  body  of  helpers 
from  amongst  his  own  converts ;  yet  it  is  almost  amusing 
to  note  how  grudgingly,  and  with  what  reluctant,  not  to 
say  resisting,  steps,  he  moved  in  this  direction.  But  he 
was  borne  away  by  forces  too  strong  to  be  resisted.  The 
new  and  glad  spiritual  energies  awakening  hi  multitudes 
broke  inevitably  into  speech.  The  attempt  to  keep  them 
decorously  inarticulate  was  vain. 

After  Whitefield  had  preached  one  afternoon  at  Isling- 
ton Churchyard  a  layman  named  Bowers,  in  all  the  joy 
of  his  new-found  spiritual  life,  stoqd  up  on  the  table  when 
Whitefield  had  finished  and  began  to  address  the  crowd. 
All  ecclesiastical  sensibilities  were  fluttered  by  the  spec- 
tacle. Charles  Wesley,  who  was  present,  tried  in  vain  to 
stop  Bowers,  and  at  last  withdrew  indignantly,  by  way  of 
protest.  The  zeal  of  this  too  daring  layman  was  in- 
extinguishable. He  attempted  to  preach  afterwards  in 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  307. 


206  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

the  streets  of  Oxford,  was  arrested  by  the  beadles,  and 
scourged  with  stern  rebuke  for  his  obstinately  vocal  tongue 
by  Charles  Wesley. 

This  volunteer  orator,  it  may  be  conceded,  needed  to  be 
suppressed ;  but  Wesley  was  compelled  to  choose  amongst 
his  comrades  men  whom  his  shrewd  eyes — and  he  had 
the  eye  of  a  great  captain  for  fit  instruments — saw  to  be 
prudent  and  trustworthy,  as  well  as  zealous  and  gifted, 
to  watch  over  the  converts  in  one  place  while  he  moved 
on  to  preach  elsewhere.  His  helpers  were  in  all  cases 
volunteers.  Thus,  at  the  latter  end  of  1739  Wesley  re- 
cords: "A  young  man  named  Thomas  Maxfield  came 
and  desired  to  help  me  as  a  son  of  the  Gospel.  Soon 
after  came  another,  Thomas  Richards,  then  a  third, 
Thomas  Westall.  These,  severally,  desired  to  serve  me 
as  sons,  as  helpers,  when  and  where  I  should  direct." 
The  names  of  these  men  deserve  to  live  in  history.  They 
were  the  advance  guard  of  a  great  and  noble  host. 

But  if  Wesley  took  their  help,  he  did  it  in  very  grudg- 
ing measure,  with  plentiful  doubts,  and  only  on  the 
avowed  grounds  of  necessity.  He  could  not  forbid,  he 
would  not  expressly  sanction,  and  at  first  he  satisfied 
himself  with  merely  "permitting"  lay  preaching.  But 
he  did  this  with  doubts,  and  doubts  that  looked  both 
ways ;  doubts  whether  he  ought  to  do  so  much,  and  also 
whether  he  ought  not  to  do  more. 

"  It  is  not  clear  to  us  (he  says)  that  presbyters,  so  circumstanced 
as  we  are,  may  appoint  or  ordain  others ;  but  it  is  that  we  may 
direct,  as  well  as  suffer  them  to  do,  what  we  conceive  they  are 
moved  to  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  We  think  that  they  who  are  only 
called  of  God  and  not  of  man,  have  more  right  to  preach  than 
they  who  are  only  called  of  man  and  not  of  God.  Now,  that 
many  of  the  clergy,  though  called  of  man,  are  not  called  of  God 
to  preach  His  Gospel  is  undeniable.  First,  because  they  them- 
selves utterly  disclaim,  nay,  ridicule  the  inward  call ;  secondly, 
because  they  do  not  know  what  the  Gospel  is ;  of  consequence 
they  do  not,  and  cannot  preach  it.  That  I  have  not  gone  too 
far  yet,  I  know  ;  but  whether  I  have  gone  far  enough,  I  am  ex- 
tremely doubtful.  Soul-damning  clergymen  lay  me  under  more 
difficulties  than  soul-saving  laymen." l 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  307. 


A    NEW    ORDER   OF   HELPERS  207 

Wesley  at  first  allowed  his  helpers  to  exhort,  but  rigor- 
ously forbade  them  to  preach.  They  might  expound  the 
Scriptures;  but  they  must  not  venture  on  the  solemn 
business  of  delivering  a  "sermon."  This,  however,  was 
obviously  an  arrangement  which  could  not  last.  Who 
can  decide  the  exact  point  at  which  an  exhortation  attains 
the  awful  dignity  of  a  sermon  ?  And  why  should  an 
address  which  was  legitimate,  and  even  praiseworthy,  as 
an  exhortation,  suddenly  become  a  mere  impiety,  when 
identified  as  a  sermon?  Wesley  was  at  Bristol  when 
the  tidings  reached  him  that  Maxfield,  his  earliest  helper, 
whom  he  had  left  in  London,  was  preaching.  All  the 
sacerdotalist  in  him — and  there  was  much  of  sacerdotal- 
ism behind  his  long  nose  and  beneath  his  flowing  wig — 
took  fire.  He  hastened  to  London,  brooding  as  he  went 
in  angry  alarm  over  this  scandal.  "  John,"  said  his  wise 
mother  when  they  met,  "take  care  what  you  do  with 
respect  to  that  young  man,  for  he  is  as  surely  called  by 
God  to  preach  as  you  are.  Examine  what  have  been  the 
fruits  of  his  preaching  and  hear  him  for  yourself." 

His  mother's  words  touched  a  very  sensitive  chord  in 
Wesley's  intellect  and  conscience.  The  "fruits  of  his 
preaching"!  These  were  final!  The  sermon  that  con- 
verts men  has  written  upon  it  the  signature  of  God's 
approval.  Wesley's  prejudices  were  stubborn,  but  they 
always  yielded  to  facts.  He  listened,  watched,  meditated, 
decided.  "It  is  the  Lord,"  he  said,  "let  Him  do  what 
seemeth  Him  good." 

Wesley  quickly  found  another  instance  more  striking 
and  decisive  than  even  that  of  Maxfield,  where  upon  a 
layman's  preaching  was  written,  in  characters  visible  to 
all  men,  the  signature  of  God's  approval  and  use.  John 
Nelson,  whose  spiritual  history  is  one  of  the  romances  of 
early  Methodism,  had  been  for  some  time  exhorting  his 
neighbours  at  Birstal.  He  says  of  himself  at  that  time 
that  "  he  would  rather  be  hanged  on  a  tree  than  go  to 
preach."  But  the  crowds  that  gathered  about  him  and 
nung  upon  his  words,  and  found  in  them  a  converting 
energy,  drew  him  on ;  and  Nelson,  to  his  own  alarm, 
found  himself  at  last  guilty  of  delivering  a  sermon.  He 
wrote  to  Wesley  begging  for  advice  "now  to  carry  on 
the  work  which  God  had  begun  by  such  an  unpolished 


208  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

tool  as  myself."  Wesley  accordingly  went  down  to  Birstal. 
"He  sat  down  by  my  fireside,"  records  Nelson,  "in  the 
very  posture  I  dreamed  about  four  months  before,  and 
spoke  the  same  words  I  dreamed  he  spoke."  Wesley 
found  both  preacher  and  congregation  in  Birstal  raised 
up  without  his  act  or  knowledge,  and  as  he  looked  and 
listened  he  realised  that  the  question  of  lay  preaching 
was  settled  for  all  time.  He  recognised,  indeed,  in  this 
new  order  of  Christian  workers  springing  up  under  his 
eyes  the  solution  of  a  great  problem. 

What  sort  of  men  were  these  helpers  who  thus  gathered 
round  Wesley  and  gave  range,  continuity,  and  permanence 
to  his  work  ?  Their  story  lies  written  in  faded  and  well- 
nigh  forgotten  biographies.  And  from  these  ancient 
volumes  their  faces  look  out  upon  us  with  a  curious 
effect.  The  art  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  very  cruel 
to  its  subjects ;  and  the  portraits  of  Wesley's  helpers,  it 
must  be  confessed,  are  not  seldom  of  an  alarming  quality. 
They  are  not  often  the  faces  of  scholars.  Sainthood  has 
not  yet  had  time  to  refine  the  coarse,  strong  features  of 
the  ploughman,  or  the  stonemason,  or  the  private  soldier. 
Southey,  describing  the  portrait  of  John  Haime,  gives  a 
cruel  category  of  his  features  :  "  Small,  inexpressive  eyes, 
scanty  eyebrows,  and  a  short,  broad,  vulgar  nose,  in  a 
face  of  ordinary  proportions,  seem  to  mark  out  a  subject 
who  would  have  been  content  to  travel  a  jog-trot  along 
the  high-road  of  mortality,  and  have  looked  for  no  greater 
delight  than  that  of  smoking  and  boozing  in  the  chimney- 
corner.  And  yet  John  Haime  passed  his  whole  life  in  a 
continued  spiritual  ague." 

But  John  Haime's  "spiritual  ague,"  with  its  alterna- 
tions of  fire  and  ice,  of  anxious  dreads  and  exultant  rap- 
tures, was,  after  all,  infinitely  nobler  than  the  animal-like 
content  in  which  the  majority  of  his  fellow-countrymen 
at  that  moment  lived. 

These  men,  for  all  their  limitations,  deserve  to  be 
counted  among  God's  heroes.  They  had  a  touch  of  the 
divine  patience,  the  courage  which  no  terrors  could  shake, 
of  the  early  Christian  martyrs.  They  were  saints  like 
Francis  of  Assisi,  dreamers  like  Bunyan.  They  had  a 
perpetual  vision  of  the  spiritual  world.  To  Bunyan 
"  above  Elstow  Green  was  heaven,  beneath  was  hell."  And 


A    NEW    ORDER    OF   HELPERS  209 

Wesley's  first  preachers  saw  all  men  set  betwixt  such 
dread  opposites.  They  had  all  the  zeal  of  the  preaching 
Friars  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with  a  better  theology  than 
they  and  an  infinitely  nobler  morality.  Their  speech  was 
the  channel  of  a  power  which  lay  beyond  alike  the  com- 
prehension or  the  analysis  of  reason.  The  more,  indeed, 
their  sneering  critics  emphasise  the  lowly  birth,  the  scanty 
training,  the  untaught  simplicity  of  these  early  Methodist 
preachers,  the  more  wonderful  becomes  their  work.  What 
strange  force  was  it  that  seized  these  untaught  men, 
transfigured  them,  lifted  them  up  to  the  height  of  great 
and  sacred  emotions,  made  them  not  merely  orators  who 
could  sway  crowds,  but  apostles  who  could  save  souls  ?  For 
the  great,  perpetual  miracle  of  Christianity,  the  miracle 
of  making  drunkards  sober,  thieves  honest,  and  harlots 
chaste,  was,  somehow,  wrought  by  the  preaching  of 
Wesley's  helpers.  It  was  wrought,  indeed,  on  a  scale 
which  left  the  decorous  and  orderly  ministry  of  the 
Church  of  that  day  utterly  bankrupt! 

The  lives  of  the  early  Methodist  preachers  belong,  alas  ! 
to  the  realm  of  forgotten  literature ;  yet  he  who  explores 
these  dead  biographies  will  find  some  strange  and  rich 
booty  in  them.  They  are  written  for  the  most  part  in 
homely  English,  the  English  of  Bunyan  or  of  Cobbett. 
They  are  rich  in  strange  incidents,  and  in  amazingly  vivid 
portraits  of  strange  characters.  The  story  of  John  Nelson, 
for  example,  might  be  described  as  Bunyan's  "Grace 
Abounding"  translated  into  human  terms  once  more. 

Nelson  was  a  typical  Yorkshireman,  strong  -  bodied, 
stubborn,  rich  in  quaint  humour  and  in  homely  common- 
sense,  and  rich,  too,  in  the  capacity  for  profound  religious 
feeling.  He  had,  as  even  Southey  says,  "  as  high  a  spirit 
and  as  brave  a  heart  as  ever  Englishman  was  blessed 
with."  The  religious  struggles  through  which  he  passed 
deserve  to  be  classed  with  those  of  Bunyan  or  of  Francis 
de  Sales,  and  they  are  described  with  equal  vividness. 
He  had  a  stormy  youth,  and  at  thirty  years  of  age  re- 
cords that,  "rather  than  live  another  thirty  years  like 
those  already  passed,  he  would  choose  to  be  strangled." 
"  Surely,"  said  he,  "  God  never  made  man  to  be  such  a 
riddle  to  himself,  and  to  leave  him  so !  There  must  be 
something  in  religion  that  I  am  unacquainted  with,  to 

O 


210  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

satisfy  the  empty  mind  of  man,  or  he  is  in  a  worse  state 
than  the  beasts  that  perish."  He  heard  Whitefield,  but 
that  most  mellifluous  of  all  preachers  did  not  suit  the 
brooding  nature  of  this  stubborn  Yorkshireman.  Later 
he  heard  Wesley.  "  Oh,"  he  says,  "  that  was  a  blessed 
morning  for  my  soul."  His  description  of  Wesley  as  a 
preacher  is  classic  and  has  already  been  quoted. 

In  how  heroic  a  temper  Nelson  took  his  religion  can 
be  imagined.  He  knew  no  half-measures.  He  carried 
his  fearless  spirit  into  his  piety  and  rebuked  sin  in  high 
or  low.  He  was  a  stonemason,  and  was  working  at  the 
time  at  the  Exchequer,  a  royal  building.  He  was  re- 
quired by  his  foreman  to  work  on  the  Sabbath  day,  on 
the  ground  that  it  was  the  king's  business,  and  even  the 
Ten  Commandments  must  yield  to  royalty.  The  honest 
Yorkshireman  declared  he  would  not  work  on  the  Sabbath 
for  any  man  in  England.  "Religion,"  said  the  foreman, 
"  has  made  you  a  rebel  against  the  king."  "  No,  sir,"  he 
replied,  "  it  has  made  me  a  better  subject  than  ever  I  was. 
The  greatest  enemies  the  king  has  are  Sabbath-breakers, 
swearers,  drunkards,  and  whoremongers,  for  these  pull 
down  God's  judgments  both  upon  king  and  country." 
He  was  told  that  he  must  lose  his  employment  if  he 
would  not  obey  his  orders;  his  answer  was,  "he  would 
rather  want  bread  than  wilfully  offend  God."  The  fore- 
man swore  that  he  would  be  as  mad  as  Whitefield  if  he 
went  on. 

"'What  hast  thou  done,'  said  he,  'that  thou  needst  make  so 
much  ado  about  salvation  ?  I  always  took  thee  to  be  as  honest  a 
man  as  any  I  have  in  the  work,  and  could  have  trusted  thee  with 
five  hundred  pounds.'  'So  you  might,'  answered  Nelson,  'and 
not  have  lost  one  penny  by  me.'  '  I  have  a  worse  opinion  of  thee 
now,'  said  the  foreman.  '  Master,'  he  replied,  '  I  have  the  odds 
of  you ;  for  I  have  a  much  worse  opinion  of  myself  than  you  can 
have.' " 

Nelson's  zeal  was  of  so  ardent  a  type  that  out  of  his 
scanty  earnings  he  actually  hired  one  of  his  fellow- work- 
men to  go  to  hear  Wesley  preach,  and  so  give  his  soul 
a  chance.  Religion  shot  through  with  gleams  of  poetry 
the  untaught  imagination  of  this  Yorkshire  mason ;  and 
describing  his  own  feelings  he  says,  "  My  soul  seemed  to 


A   NEW   ORDER   OF   HELPERS  211 

breathe  its  life  in  God  as  naturally  as  my  body  breathed 
life  in  the  common  air."  The  vicar  of  Birstal,  where 
Nelson  lived,  by  way  of  suppressing  this  inconveniently 
earnest  Christian,  had  him  pressed  for  a  soldier,  in  de- 
fiance of  the  law,  and  the  story  of  what  he  suffered 
sheds  a  curious  light  on  the  social  condition  of  England 
in  that  day. 

As  a  pressed  man,  Nelson  was  marched  through  York, 
where  his  reputation  as  one  of  these  new,  fanatical,  and 
much-hated  Methodists  was  well  known.  It  was,  says 
Nelson,  "as  if  hell  were  removed  from  beneath  to  meet 
me  at  my  coming.  The  streets  and  windows  were  filled 
with  people,  who  shouted  and  huzzaed  as  if  I  had  been 
one  that  had  laid  waste  the  nation.  But  the  Lord  made 
my  brow  like  brass,  so  that  I  could  look  on  them  as  grass- 
hoppers, and  pass  through  the  city  as  if  there  had  been 
none  in  it  but  God  and  myself."  Nelson,  though  forced 
into  the  ranks,  still  held  that  a  red  coat  did  not  discharge 
him  from  his  obligations  as  a  preacher,  and  he  rebuked 
his  astonished  officers  to  then*  face  for  their  oaths.  An 
uncomfortable  soldier  this !  One  youthful  ensign  set 
himself  to  suppress  this  strange  recruit,  and  showed  much 
ingenuity  in  inventing  insults  and  cruelties  to  be  expended 
upon  him.  At  this  stage  of  his  story  the  mere  unre- 

fenerate  Yorkshireman  emerges  for  a  moment  in  honest 
ohn's  autobiography. 

"  '  It  caused  a  sore  temptation  to  arise  in  me,'  he  says,  '  to  think 
that  an  ignorant,  wicked  man  should  thus  torment  me — and  I  able 
to  tie  his  head  and  heels  together !  I  found  an  old  man's  bone 
in  me  !  " 

Nelson  obtained  his  discharge  at  last  through  the  in- 
fluence of  Lady  Huntingdon,  but  his  story  is  as  moving 
a  bit  of  English  as  there  is  to  be  found  in  the  literature 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  And  the  lives  of  many  of 
these  preachers  are  rich  in  such  stories,  heroic,  pathetic, 
sometimes  absurd,  but  with  a  gleam  of  nobility  running 
through  their  simplest  performances. 

Alexander  Mather,  for  example,  had  by  virtue  of  his 
Scottish  blood  a  toughness  of  body  and  a  certain  fierce 
energy  of  industry  that  to  an  ordinary  man  might  well 
seem  incredible.  He  was  a  baker,  working  hours  which 


212  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

the  modern  temper  would  find  intolerable,  yet  he  found 
time  to  be  one  of  Wesley's  most  effective  helpers : — 

"I  had  no  time  for  preaching  but  what  I  took  from  my  sleep,  so 
that  I  frequently  had  not  eight  hours'  sleep  in  a  week.  This,  with 
hard  labour,  constant  abstemiousness,  and  frequent  fasting,  brought 
me  so  low  that  my  master  was  often  afraid  I  should  kill  myself, 
and  perhaps  his  fear  was  not  groundless.  I  frequently  put  off  my 
shirts  as  wet  with  sweat  as  if  they  had  been  dipped  in  water. 
After  hastening  to  finish  my  business  abroad,  I  have  come  home 
all  in  a  sweat  in  the  evening,  changed  my  clothes,  and  ran  to  preach 
at  one  or  another  chapel,  then  walked  or  ran  back,  changed  my 
clothes,  and  gone  to  work  at  ten,  wrought  hard  all  night,  and 
preached  at  five  the  next  morning.  I  ran  back  to  draw  the  bread 
at  a  quarter  or  half-an-hour  past  six,  wrought  hard  in  the  bake- 
house till  eight,  then  hurried  about  with  bread  till  the  afternoon, 
and  perhaps  at  night  set  off  again." 

Another  of  Wesley's  helpers,  Thomas  Olivers,  was  a 
Welshman,  with  all  the  qualities  of  the  Welsh  tempera- 
ment, its  fervour,  its  simplicity,  its  gleam  of  poetry,  its 
capacity  for  sudden  anger.  Describing  his  own^  spiritual 
condition  after  conversion,  he  says — "I  truly  lived  by 
faith.  I  saw  God  in  everything — the  heavens,  the  eartn 
and  all  therein  showed  me  something  of  Him — yea,  even 
from  a  drop  of  water,  a  blade  of  grass,  or  a  grain  of  sand 
I  often  received  instruction." 

Of  Olivers's  emotional  susceptibilities  many  striking 
amusing  illustrations  are  given.  While  he  was  dining 
one  day  about  noon  a  thought  came  over  him  that  he  was 
not  called  to  preach.  The  food  which  then  lay  before 
him  did  not  belong  to  him,  and  he  was  a  thief  and  a 
robber  in  eating  it.  He  burst  into  tears  and  could  eat 
no  more ;  and,  having  to  officiate  at  one  o'clock,  went  to 
the  preaching-house,  weeping  all  the  way.  He  went 
weeping  into  the  pulpit,  and  wept  sorely  while  he  gave 
out  the  hymn,  while  he  prayed,  and  while  he  preached. 
A  sympathetic  emotion  naturally  spread  through  the  con- 
gregation ;  many  of  them  "  cried  aloud  for  the  disquiet- 
ness  of  their  souls." 

Wesley  proved  an  ideal  captain  for  these  ecclesiastical 
irregulars.  They  were  his  spiritual  children,  as  well  as 
his  helpers.  His  government  over  them  had  in  it  a 


A    NEW    ORDER    OF    HELPERS  213 

fatherly  strain;  and  yet  he  enforced  upon  them  a  disci- 
pline of  an  almost  heroic  pitch.  They  were  soldiers  on  a 
campaign,  and  there  is  more  than  a  touch  of  military 
severity  in  the  rules  enforced  upon  them.  These  rules 
descend  to  the  homeliest  details  of  food,  dress,  manners, 
hours  of  sleep,  methods  of  work,  and  general  conduct. 
Never  did  a  body  of  men  work  more  diligently,  fare 
harder,  and  receive  smaller  pay  in  earthly  coin  than  did 
this  first  generation  of  Methodist  preachers.  "  Never  be 
unemployed,  never  be  triflingly  employed,"  was  Wesley's 
rule  for  them — a  rule  which  was  but  the  reflex  of  his  own 
practice. 

Wesley's  care  for  his  preachers  was  not  unqualified  by 
an  ample  knowledge  of  the  weakness  of  human  nature. 
Here  are  some  of  his  regulations : — 

"  Be  serious  ;  let  your  motto  be,  Holiness  to  the  Lord.  Avoid  all 
lightness  as  you  would  avoid  hell-fire,  and  trifling  as  you  would 
cursing  and  swearing.  Touch  no  woman  ;  be  as  loving  as  you 
will,  but  the  custom  of  the  country  is  nothing  to  us.  Take 
money  of  no  one ;  if  they  give  you  food  when  you  are  hungry, 
and  clothes  when  you  want  them,  it  is  enough;  but  not  silver 
or  gold  ;  let  there  be  no  pretence  for  any  one  to  say  we  grow  rich 
by  the  Gospel." 

The  thoroughness  with  which  Wesley  investigated  and 
regulated  the  domestic  habits  of  his  preachers,  finds  many 
entertaining  illustrations. 

"  '  Do  you,'  said  he,  '  deny  yourselves  every  useless  pleasure 
of  sense,  imagination,  honour?  Are  you  temperate  in  all  things? 
To  take  one  instance — in  food,  do  you  use  only  that  kind,  and 
that  degree,  which  is  best  both  for  the  body  and  soul  ?  Do  you 
see  the  necessity  of  this  ?  Do  you  eat  no  flesh  suppers  1  No  late 
suppers  1  These  naturally  tend  to  destroy  bodily  health.  Do 
you  eat  only  three  times  a  day  1  If  four,  are  you  not  an  excellent 
pattern  to  the  flock !  Do  you  take  no  more  food  than  is  necessary 
at  each  meal?  You  may  know,  if  you  do,  by  a  load  at  your 
stomach ;  by  drowsiness  or  heaviness ;  and,  in  a  while,  by  weak 
or  bad  nerves.  Do  you  use  only  that  kind,  and  that  degree,  of 
drink  which  is  best  both  for  your  body  and  soul  ?  Do  you  drink 
water  1  Why  not  ?  Did  you  ever  ?  Why  did  you  leave  it  off, 
if  not  for  health  ?  When  will  you  begin  again  ?  To-day  ?  How 
often  do  you  drink  wine  or  ale  ?  Every  day  ?  Do  you  want  or 
waste  it?'" 


214  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

He  declared  his  own  purpose,  of  eating  only  vegetables 
on  Fridays,  and  taking  only  toast  and  water  in  the  morn- 
ing ;  and  he  expected  the  preachers  to  observe  the  same 
kind  of  fast. 

Wesley  was  so  much  in  advance  ot  his  age  as  to  under- 
stand the  educational  power  of  the  Press,  and  he  used  his 
preachers,  systematically,  as  its  vehicle.  No  preacher  was 
to  make  any  personal  excursion  into  authorship  with- 
out Wesley's  consent ;  but  a  parcel  of  the  books  Wesley 
himself  published  was  part  of  the  travelling  equipment 
of  every  itinerant.  "  Carry  them  with  you,"  said  Wesley, 
"  through  every  town.  Exert  yourselves  in  this.  Be  not 
ashamed ;  be  not  weary ;  leave  no  stone  unturned." 

The  itinerancy  of  Wesley's  helpers  was,  at  first,  |of  a 
very  active  sort.  A  preacher,  he  thought,  would  exhaust 
his  message  to  any  one  community  in  seven  or  eight 
weeks.  After  that  period,  Wesley  argued,  "neither  can 
he  find  matter  for  preaching  every  morning  and  even- 
ing, nor  will  people  come  to  hear  him ;  hence,  he  grows 
cold  by  lying  in  bed,  and  so  do  the  people.  Whereas, 
if  he  never  stays  more  than  a  fortnight  in  one  place,  he 
will  find  matter  enough,  and  the  people  will  gladly  hear 
him."  "  I  know,"  says  Wesley  frankly,  "  were  I  to  preach 
one  whole  year  in  one  place,  I  should  preach  both  myself 
and  my  congregation  to  sleep." 

Wesley,  with  a  wise  benevolence  for  both  preachers 
and  congregations,  insisted  that  his  helpers  should  preach 
short  sermons.  One  of  his  regulations,  indeed,  might 
with  great  advantage  be  painted  in  golden  characters  on 
every  church  in  the  world  to-day.  His  preachers  were 
enjoined  "to  begin  and  end  always  precisely  at  the  time 
appointed,  and  always  to  conclude  the  service  in  about 
an  hour;  to  suit  their  subject  to  the  audience;  to  choose 
the  plainest  text,  and  keep  close  to  the  text;  neither 
rambling  from  it,  nor  allegorising,  nor  spiritualising  too 
much."  They  were  not  to  be  vociferous. 

"'Scream  no  more,'  Wesley  wrote  to  one  of  his  helpers,  'at  the 
peril  of  your  soul.  God  now  warns  you,  by  me,  whom  He  has  set 
over  you,  speak  with  all  your  heart,  but  with  moderate  voice.  I 
often  speak  loud,  often  vehemently,  but  I  never  scream ;  I  never 
strain  myself.  I  dare  not.  I  know  it  to  be  a  sin  against  God 
and  my  own  soul.'" 


A    NEW    ORDER   OF    HELPERS  215 

There  is  assuredly  the  salt  of  common-sense  in  all  this. 
When  before  in  history,  indeed,  was  there  such  a  com- 
bination of  zeal,  which,  by  its  mere  temperature,  suggests 
fanaticism,  linked  to  so  much  of  cool-eyed  sanity,  and  of 
practical  sense ! 

Southey  says,  scornfully,  of  these  early  preachers,  that 
"they  possessed  no  other  qualification  as  teachers  than 
a  good  stock  of  animal  spirits  and  a  ready  flow  of  words, 
a  talent  which,  of  all  others,  is  least  connected  with  sound 
intellect."  But  this  is  one  of  the  many  passages  in  his 
"Life  of  Wesley"  in  which  Southey's  prejudices  blind  him 
to  facts.  These  men  were,  no  doubt,  as  one  of  them  de- 
scribes himself,  "brown-bread  preachers."  But  at  least 
they  knew,  and  knew  well,  and  by  that  surest  form  of 
knowledge — the  knowledge  born  of  verified  experience — 
all  they  taught.  Wesley  says,  energetically,  of  them :  "  In 
the  one  thing,  which  they  profess  to  know,  they  are  not 
ignorant  men.  I  trust  there  is  not  one  of  them  who  is  not 
able  to  go  through  such  an  examination  in  substantial, 
practical,  experimental  divinity  as  few  of  our  candidates 
ror  holy  orders,  even  in  the  University  (I  speak  it  with 
sorrow  and  shame,  and  in  tender  love),  are  able  to  do." l 

Wesley  himself,  however,  had  a  scholar's  hate  of  ignor- 
ance, and  he  toiled  with  almost  amusing  diligence  to 
educate  his  helpers.  He  insisted  that  they  should  be 
readers,  and  scourged  them  with  a  very  sharp  whip  if 
he  found  them  neglecting  their  books.  Thus  he  writes 
to  one : — 

"  Your  talent  in  preaching  does  not  increase.  It  is  just  the  same 
as  it  was  seven  years  ago.  It  is  lively,  but  not  deep.  There  is 
little  variety  ;  there  is  no  compass  of  thought.  Reading  only  can 
supply  this,  with  daily  meditation  and  daily  prayer.  You  wrong 
yourself  greatly  by  omitting  this.  You  can  never  be  a  deep 
preacher  without  it,  any  more  than  a  thorough  Christian.  Oh, 
begin  !  Fix  some  part  of  every  day  for  private  exercises.  You 
may  acquire  the  taste  which  you  have  not.  What  is  tedious  at 
first  will  afterwards  be  pleasant.  Whether  you  like  it  or  not, 
read  and  pray  daily.  It  is  for  your  life  !  There  is  no  other 
way ;  else  you  will  be  a  trifler  all  your  days,  and  a  pretty,  super- 
ficial preacher.  Do  justice  to  your  own  soul ;  give  it  time  and 
means  to  grow ;  do  not  starve  yourself  any  longer." 

1  Southej,  To1,  i.  p.  310. 


216  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

Wesley  was  wisely  anxious  as  to  the  pulpit  style  of  his 
helpers,  and  the  chief  of  all  pulpit  virtues,  of  the  literary 
sort,  he  held  to  be  clearness. 

"  'Clearness,'  lie  writes  to  one  of  his  lay-assistants,  'is  necessary 
or  you  and  me,  because  we  are  to  instruct  people  of  the  lowest 
understanding.  Therefore  we,  above  all,  if  we  think  with  the 
wise,  must  yet  speak  with  the  vulgar.  We  should  constantly  use 
the  most  common,  little,  easy  words  (so  they  are  pure  and  proper) 
which  our  language  affords.  When  first  I  talked  at  Oxford  to 
plain  people,  in  the  castle  of  the  town,  I  observed  they  gaped  and 
stared.  This  quickly  obliged  me  to  alter  my  style,  and  adopt  the 
language  of  those  I  spoke  to ;  and  yet  there  is  a  dignity  in  their 
simplicity  which  is  not  disagreeable  to  those  of  the  highest  rank.'  " 

These  early  Methodist  preachers,  if  they  did  not  know 
much  of  "high  thinking,"  at  least  had  an  abundant  ex- 
perience of  plain  living.  Wesley  proposed  that  Mather 
should  go  with  hiiu  on  a  preaching  tour  in  Ireland,  and 
he  was  asked  how  much  he  thought  would  be  sufficient 
for  the  support  of  his  wife  during  his  absence.  Mather 
fixed  the  sum  at  the  modest  rate  of  43.  a  week,  and  this 
was  counted  excessive !  The  wife  of  a  Methodist  helper 
in  those  heroic  days  must  have  been  of  an  even  more 
frugal  mind  than  John  Gilpin's  wife,  sung  by  Cowper. 
The  helper,  when  on  a  preaching  tour,  was  expected  to 
find  his  food  amongst  those  who  heard  him.  When  he 
was  at  home,  his  wife  was  allowed  is.  6d.  a  day  for  his 
board,  with  the  understanding  that  whenever  her  husband 
was  invited  out  for  a  meal  the  price  of  that  meal  was  to 
be  deducted  from  the  is.  6d.  The  wife's  allowance  was 
43.  a  week,  with  the  further  allowance  of  £1  a  quarter 
for  each  child. 

At  the  ninth  Conference,  held  in  October  1752,  at 
Bristol,  it  was  agreed  that  the  preachers  should  receive 
a  stipend  of  £12  per  annum,  in  order  to  provide  them- 
selves with  necessaries.  Their  list  of  "  necessaries  "  must 
have  been  of  Spartan  brevity.  But  more  than  twelve 
years  afterwards,  at  the  Conference  of  1765,  a  deputation 
from  the  York  circuit  was  admitted  and  allowed  to  plead 
against  the  "large  sum  of  £,12  a  year"!  Before  1752, 
each  circuit  made  its  own  financial  arrangements  with 
the  preachers,  and  sometimes  they  were  of  a  quaint  order. 


A    NEW    ORDER    OF    HELPERS  217 

As  late  as  1764,  the  practice  in  the  Norwich  circuit,  for 
example,  was  to  divide  the  love-feast  money  among  the 
preachers,  and  "  this,"  says  Myles,  with  a  certain  accent 
of  melancholy,  "  was  very  little  indeed." 

When  before  in  history  was  there  such  an  inexpensive 
order  of  preachers  as  these  early  helpers  of  Wesley  ?  They 
laid  up  much  treasure  in  heaven,  but  had  very  empty 
pockets  on  earth.  One  of  them,  John  Jane,  died  at 
Epworth.  His  entire  wardrobe  was  insufficient  to  pay 
his  funeral  expenses,  which  amounted  to  £\,  175.  3d. 
All  the  money  he  possessed  was  i  s.  4d.,  "  enough,"  records 
Wesley  briefly,  "  for  any  unmarried  preacher  of  the  Gospel 
to  leave  to  his  executors." 

Many  of  these  early  preachers,  it  is  true,  sooner  or  later 
failed  Wesley.  They  settled  down  to  the  charge  of  dis- 
senting congregations,  or  they  accepted  orders  in  the 
Anglican  Church.  Some  were  swept  away  by  one  theo- 
logical craze  or  another.  Many  excuses  are  to  be  made 
for  them.  Their  position  was  undefined ;  their  place  in 
the  great  movement  unsettled.  They  did  the  work  of 
ministers  without  having  as  yet  any  claim  to  the  minis- 
terial office.  But  the  part  they  played  in  Wesley's  move- 
ment can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  The  Methodist  ministry 
of  to-day  comes  by  direct  descent  from  them.  Out  of 
them,  too,  has  grown  the  great  order  of  lay  preachers, 
without  which  Methodism  itself  could  not  exist. 

For  every  Methodist  minister  in  the  world  to-day  there 
are,  roughly  speaking,  ten  lay  preachers ;  and  out  of  every 
seven  sermons  preached  in  Methodist  pulpits  every  Sunday, 
six  are  preached  by  the  lips  of  laymen.  Every  minister 
who  stands  in  a  Methodist  pulpit  has  passed  through  this 
order.  The  great  sign  and  pledge  of  the  non-sacerdotal 
character  of  Methodism  is  found  in  two  facts.  Its  ministers 
share  their  preaching  office  with  the  lay  preachers,  and 
their  pastoral  office  with  the  leaders. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HOW    THE    NEW    CONVERTS    WERE    SHELTERED 

CONVERTS  were  now  multiplying  fast;  they  had  grown 
to  the  scale  of  an  army,  and  a  new  and  most  perplexing 
problem  was  born  of  Wesley's  very  success.  How  was  he 
to  watch  over  his  converts  ?  They  had  the  untaught  sim- 
plicity of  children ;  they  were  scattered  over  a  vast  area ; 
the  spiritual  atmosphere  about  them  was  ungenial.  The 
clergy,  their  natural  shepherds,  had  towards  them  too 
often  the  temper  of  wolves.  They  treated  them  as  out- 
casts and  drove  them  from  the  sacramental  table.  The 
converts  looked  to  Wesley  as  their  spiritual  leader;  yet 
how  could  he,  an  evangelist  hurrying  perpetually  on  to 
preach  to  new  crowds,  keep  in  personal  touch  with  the 
converts  behind  him  ?  The  most  difficult  problem  of  the 
whole  revival  had  to  be  solved,  and  on  its  solution  de- 
pended the  permanency  of  Wesley's  work. 

It  is,  therefore,  with  something  of  the  joy  of  discovery, 
the  accent  of  a  spiritual  Archimedes  crying  "Eureka," 
that,  amid  the  hurry  of  his  work  and  the  fast-multiplying 
crowds  of  his  converts,  Wesley  catches  his  first  vision  of 
the  class-meeting,  and  sees  of  what  uses  it  is  capable. 
"  This,"  he  cries,  "  is  the  thing ;  the  very  thing  that  we 
have  wanted  so  long." 

Yet  Wesley's  note  of  surprised  gladness  is  not  a  little 
puzzling.  A  religious  society  of  some  sort  is  a  constant 
and  familiar  feature  of  his  whole  history  up  to  this  date. 
While  he  was  yet  a  student  at  Oxford,  he  records  in  his 
Journal  how  some  "serious  man,"  otherwise  nameless, 
said  to  him,  "  You  must  find  companions  or  make  them ; 
the  Bible  knows  nothing  of  a  solitary  religion."  And 
certainly  Wesley,  with  some  wise,  dumb  instinct,  always 
gave  to  his  religion  a  social  form.  He  founded  one  society 
at  Oxford;  established  another  on  board  the  ship  that 
took  him  to  America ;  organised  a  third  as  soon  as  ne  got 


218 


HOW    THE    NEW    CONVERTS   WERE    SHELTERED       219 

to  Savannah,  and  betook  himself  to  the  Moravian  society 
in  London  directly  he  landed  in  England.  He  dates  his 
religious  almanac,  indeed,  by  the  various  societies  that 
came  into  existence;  the  society  at  Oxford  in  1729,  in 
Savannah  in  1736,  in  London  in  1739,  &c.  It  was  in  the 
little  society  in  Aldersgate  Street  that  Wesley  himself  was 
converted.  And  Wesley  not  only  organised  new  societies, 
but  gladly  availed  himself  of  those  which  existed. 

Societies  within  the  Church  came  into  existence  long 
before  Methodism.  They  make  their  appearance  hi  the 
dissolute  times  that  followed  the  Restoration,  and  represent 
an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Christian  conscience  of  that 
day  to  organise  itself,  if  only  in  self-defence,  against  the 
shameless  vice  by  which  all  decency  was  affronted,  and 
the  jesting  unbelief  which  threatened  to  destroy  religion. 
In  Woodward's  account  of  these  societies  we  have,  says 
Miss  Wedgwood,  "an  exact  description  of  a  Methodist 
class-meeting,  written  four  years  before  Wesley  was  born." 
But  that  is  a  somewhat  wild  over-statement.  These  early 
societies  lacked  the  essentially  spiritual  elements  of  the 
class-meeting. 

The  Moravians,  too,  planted  their  little  societies  here 
and  there  on  English  soil,  or  captured  those  which  already 
existed.  So  it  is  true,  though  it  is  only  half  the  truth, 
that  Wesley  did  not  invent  religious  societies  in  England. 
But  he  gave  those  which  existed  a  new  form ;  he  charged 
them  with  a  new  office.  The  religious  societies  Woodward 
describes  were  tiny  nurseries  of  morals.  The  Moravian 
societies  were,  or  became,  mere  centres  of  quietism.  The 
Methodist  society,  in  its  final  form — the  class-meeting — 
is  something  profoundly  different. 

Wesley,  of  course,  found  the  great  principle  of  religious 
fellowship  in  active  operation  in  the  Apostolic  Church. 
In  his  class-meetings  he  merely  organised  that  principle 
afresh,  translated  it  into  new  terms,  and  made  it  a  per- 
manent element  and  condition  of  church  life.  And  in 
doing  this  he  was  faithful  to  the  highest  ideals  of  church 
order. 

There  are  two  possible  theories  of  church  relationship. 
One  is  what  may  be  called  the  tram-car  theory.  Here  is 
an  accidental  group  of  people  who  sit  side  by  side  for  a 
few  moments,  who  are  going  in  the  same  direction,  are 


220  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

impelled  by  the  same  forces,  and  cared  for  by  the  same 
agencies.  But  they  are  strangers  to  each  other.  They 
have  no  common  language.  No  articulate  or  conscious 
kinship  links  them  together.  "  Society,"  except  in  the 
mechanical — or,  say,  the  geographical — sense,  does  not 
exist  betwixt  them. 

Then  there  is  what  may  be  called  the  family  theory  of 
the  Church.  Here  is  a  circle  of  human  beings  knitted 
together  by  conscious  and  acknowledged  kinship.  They 
talk  a  common  language.  They  have  common  joys  and 
sorrows  and  perils.  They  have  offices  of  help  and  pro- 
tection towards  each  other ;  what  touches  one  is  felt  by 
all.  Which  of  these  two  conceptions  of  church  member- 
ship— that  of  the  tram-car,  or  that  of  the  fireside — comes 
nearest  to  God's  ideal  it  is  needless  to  say. 

No  such  household  fellowship  existed  in  the  Church 
of  that  day,  and  this  was  one  of  the  secrets  of  its  decay. 
Southey,  describing  a  stage  in  John  Nelson's  history,  says 
that  "a  judicious  minister  who  should  have  known  the 
man  could  have  given  him  the  teaching  he  needed.  But," 
he  adds,  with  unconscious  severity,  "  the  sort  of  inter- 
course between  a  pastor  and  his  people  which  this  would 
imply  hardly  exists  anywhere,  and  cannot  possibly  exist 
in  the  metropolis."  Coleridge,  on  this,  breaks  out  in  a 
pregnant  footnote.  "  Is  this  true  ? "  he  asks ;  "  and  can 
a  Church  of  which  it  is  true  be  a  Church  of  Christ  ? " 
Wesley,  who  knew  the  Church  of  his  day  well,  says  of  it : 
"  Look  east,  west,  north,  or  south,  name  what  parish  you 
please,  is  Christian  fellowship  there  ?  Rather,  are  not 
the  bulk  of  the  parishioners  a  mere  rope  of  sand  ?  What 
Christian  connection  is  there  between  them  ?  What  in- 
tercourse in  spiritual  things  ?  What  watching  over  each 
other's  souls  ? " 

But  if  in  the  Church  of  that  day  there  was  little  direct 
fellowship  betwixt  the  minister  and  his  hearers,  still  less 
was  there  betwixt  the  hearers  themselves.  The  Church 
had  lost — perhaps  it  never  possessed — one  of  its  noblest 
functions,  the  unifying  office  betwixt  men  and  women  of 
all  ranks.  And  Wesley  was  supplying  what  is  one  of  the 
primitive  and  imperishable  necessities  of  Christian  life 
in  every  age,  and  under  all  conditions,  when,  hi  the 
shape  of  his  societies — and  later  of  the  class-meeting — 


HOW   THE   NEW   CONVERTS   WERE   SHELTERED      221 

he  erected  fellowship  into  a  permanent  feature  of  Church 
life. 

It  is  curious  to  note  how,  by  what  might  almost  be 
called  accident — by  the  mere  compulsion  of  events,  and 
not  by  conscious  plan — the  Methodist  societies  came  into 
existence.  Wesley  founded  the  society  which  afterwards 
met  in  Fetter  Lane  on  Bohler's  advice.  But,  in  1738, 
after  the  separation  from  the  Moravians,  the  Foundry 
became  the  centre  of  his  work.  "  At  the  latter  end  of 
1739,"  he  records,  "from  eight  to  ten  persons  came  to  me 
in  London  who  appeared  to  be  deeply  convinced  of  sin. 
They  desired  that  I  would  spend  some  time  with  them  in 
prayer,  and  advise  them  how  to  flee  from  the  wrath  to 
come."  Wesley  fixed  Thursday  evening  for  this  purpose. 
The  numbers  grew  fast.  "  The  first  evening  about  twelve 
persons  came,  the  next  week  thirty  or  forty.  These  grew 
to  a  hundred ;  and  then,"  says  Wesley, "  I  took  down  their 
names  and  places  of  abode,  intending  to  call  upon  them 
in  their  homes.  Thus,"  he  adds,  "  without  any  previous 
plan,  began  the  Methodist  society  in  England — a  company 
of  people  associated  together  to  help  each  other,  to  work 
out  their  own  salvation."  A  similar  society  was  formed 
at  Bristol,  and  later  at  other  places. 

Here,  then,  was  the  Methodist  society,  but  not  yet  the 
Methodist  class-meeting.  This  did  not  emerge  till  1742, 
three  years  later ;  and  it  was  an  effort  to  clear  off  the 
first  of  Methodist  Church  debts  which  yielded  the  class- 
meeting. 

On  the  meeting-house  at  Bristol  was  a  considerable  debt, 
and  the  members  of  the  society  were  consulting  how  it 
should  be  paid.  One,  Captain  Foy,  whose  name  deserves 
to  live,  stood  up  and  said,  "Let  every  member  of  the 
society  give  a  penny  a  week,  till  the  debt  is  paid." 
Another  answered,  "  Many  of  them  are  poor,  and  cannot 
afford  to  do  it."  "  Then,"  said  the  first  speaker,  "  put 
eleven  of  the  poorest  with  me ;  and  if  they  can  give  any- 
thing, well ;  I  will  call  on  them  weekly ;  and  if  they  can 
give  nothing,  I  will  give  for  them  as  well  as  for  myself. 
And  each  of  you  call  on  eleven  of  your  neighbours  weekly ; 
receive  what  they  give,  and  make  up  what  is  wanting." 
It  was  done ;  and  the  plan  was  quickly  discovered  to  yield 
more  than  pence.  "  In  a  while, '  writes  Wesley,  "  some  of 


222  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

these  informed  me,  they  found  such  and  such  an  one  did 
not  live  as  he  ought.  It  struck  me  immediately,  'This 
is  the  thing,  the  very  thing,  we  have  wanted  so  long.'" 
Here  was  the  suggestion  of  an  oversight  far-stretching 
and  yet  minute ;  the  most  effective  pastorate  the  wit  of 
man  has  yet  devised  or  the  grace  of  God  used. 

Wesley's  instinct  of  thoroughness,  his  habit  of  following 
out  a  hint  till  it  became  an  institution,  came  at  once  into 
play.  The  class-meeting  was  system atised;  it  was  made 
co-extensive  with  the  revival.  His  trained  and  scholarly 
mind  ran  through  all  history  in  search  of  precedents  and 
details,  and  these  he  found  in  abundance.  So  dispassion- 
ate a  witness  as  Paley  found  in  the  mode  of  life,  its  form 
and  habit,  of  the  early  Christian  Church,  "a  close  re- 
semblance to  the  Unitas  Fratrum  and  to  the  modern 
Methodists."  The  tesseraB,  the  symbols  of  membership 
in  the  Apostolic  Church,  were  reproduced  in  the  familiar 
"  ticket,"  the  sign  of  membership  in  the  Methodist  Church. 

The  value  of  the  societies  —  especially  in  their  later 
form  of  the  class-meeting — was  simply  measureless.  They 
gave  the  revival  coherence;  they  nourished  its  vitality. 
Each  new  convert  brought  into  the  class-meeting  found 
himself  one  of  a  group  bound  by  great  emotions  held  in 
common — sorrow  for  sin,  joy  in  pardon,  the  consciousness 
of  a  new  life,  a  common  passion  for  the  salvation  of 
others,  a  common  aspiration  after  higher  attainments  in 
Christian  experience.  He  caught  from  the  society  the 
inspiration,  and  he  found  in  it  the  safeguards,  of  com- 
panionship. The  sheltering  office  of  these  societies  was 
thus  of  inexpressible  value.  The  mere  chill  of  the  secular 
world  would  have  killed  the  new-born  spiritual  life  of 
multitudes.  The  spell  of  ancient  companionships  would 
have  asserted  itself.  But  in  the  new  companionships  into 
which  the  converts  were  brought  was  found  a  counteract- 
ing energy. 

Wesley  quickly  recognised  in  the  class-meeting  the 
most  effective  instrument  of  discipline  a  founder  or  the 
head  of  a  Church  could  desire. 

"  '  It  can  scarcely  be  conceived,'  he  says,  '  what  advantages  have 
been  reaped  from  this  little  prudential  regulation.  Many  now 
happily  experienced  that  Christian  fellowship  of  which  they  had 


HOW    THE    NEW    CONVERTS   WERE   SHELTERED       223 

not  so  much  as  an  idea  before.  They  began  to  bear  one  another's 
burdens  and  naturally  to  care  for  each  other.  Evil  men  were  de- 
tected and  reproved.  They  were  borne  with  for  a  season  ;  if  they 
forsook  their  sins  we  received  them  gladly ;  if  they  obstinately 
persisted  therein  it  was  openly  declared  that  they  were  not  of  us.'" 

Each  class  had  a  leader,  and  the  leaders'  meeting  be- 
came the  disciplinary  court  in  the  Church.  The  ticket 
which  was  the  symbol  of  membership  was  renewed  every 
three  months  during  a  personal  visitation  of  each  class 
by  Wesley  himself  or  by  one  of  his  helpers.  The  simple 
withholding  of  the  ticket  broke  the  tie  of  membership 
and  excluded  the  unworthy  ;  and  Wesley,  who  with  a  wise 
instinct  put  efficiency  before  bulk,  purged  his  classes  in 
this  way  year  by  year  with  unshrinking  thoroughness. 

What  Methodism  has  gained  hi  every  land  and  through- 
out its  whole  history  from  the  class-meeting  can  hardly 
be  expressed  in  words.  The  device  gives  range,  continuity, 
and  permanence  to  the  pastoral  work  of  the  Church.  And 
for  a  Church  with  an  itinerant  ministry  such  an  organisa- 
tion is  imperative.  Without  it  no  effective  pastorate 
can  exist.  This  great  institution  not  only  influenced 
Wesley's  work  profoundly  while  he  lived,  it  has  left  a 
deep  and  permanent  mark  on  Methodism  itself.  The 
class-meeting  gives  religion  speech ;  it  slays  that  dumb 
and  obstinate  shyness  about  spiritual  things  which  lies 
like  some  chilling  frost  on  so  many  good  people.  If 
Methodism  has  developed  in  its  laity  gifts  of  speech,  of 
prayer,  and  of  service  beyond  most  Churches,  it  is  due 
to  the  class-meeting.  And  the  stamp  of  the  class-meeting 
is  on  the  Methodist  ministry  itself.  In  the  class-meeting 
each  minister  learns,  so  to  speak,  the  grammar  of  his 
spiritual  language.  He  brings  from  it  a  glow,  a  certainty 
a  strength  which  no  other  institution  yields. 

The  class-meeting  has  its  characteristic  risks.  It  is 
not  seldom  discredited  by  want  of  elasticity  and  fresh- 
ness in  its  conduct.  But  for  Methodism  itself  it  is  a 
spiritual  nerve-centre  whence  radiate  a  thousand  spiritual 
forces.  And  it  may  be  predicted  with  great,  if  melan- 
choly, confidence  that  when  the  class-meeting  dies  Meth- 
odism itself,  if  it  survives,  will  undergo  some  silent  but 
profound  and  disastrous  change.  It  will  begin  to  ossify. 


224  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Forms  will  once  again  seem  more  than  fact.  The  familiar 
and  mournful  cycle  of  change  by  which  a  great  Church 
petrifies,  and  fits  itself  for  being  thrust  aside  by  some  new 
and  more  intensely  spiritual  agency,  will  have  begun. 

Just  now,  however,  we  are  only  concerned  to  note  the 
contribution  which  his  societies  made  to  the  success  of 
Wesley's  work  during  his  lifetime,  and  the  degree  in 
which  they  as  a  consequence  influenced  England.  The 
societies  undoubtedly  met  and  satisfied  what  was  at  the 
moment  the  special  need  of  religion  in  England.  Says 
Miss  Wedgwood : — 

"  The  yearning  for  some  common  standing-ground  broader  than 
that  of  mere  kinship,  stronger  than  that  of  mere  nationality,  must 
be  strong  at  every  time ;  perhaps  it  was  especially  strong  during 
the  eighteenth  century.  A  reaction  from  the  work  of  the  Refor- 
mation swept  many  at  that  time  into  Romanism,  and  collected 
many  more  into  little  societies  cemented  by  a  common  interest 
in  the  things  of  eternity.  But  nowhere  did  this  instinct  meet 
with  such  absolute  satisfaction  as  in  the  ranks  of  Methodism." 

In  Wesley's  societies,  to  sum  up,  a  new  and  far-stretch- 
ing brotherhood  came  into  existence.  It  spread  like  a  living 
net  over  England.  It  linked  men  and  women,  parted  from 
each  other  by  the  widest  differences  of  education  and  social 
position,  of  wealth  and  poverty,  into  a  common  household. 
It  bred  a  thousand  kindly  offices  betwixt  them.  And  as  a 
contribution  to  the  social  life  of  England  in  that  day  these 
societies  had  a  value  never  yet  sufficiently  recognised.  It 
was  not  merely  that  they  had  the  office  of  a  salt  in  the 
blood  of  the  body  social ;  and  that  each  little  class-meet- 
ing was  a  centre  of  religious  energies  affecting  everything 
within  its  reach.  The  classes  were  a  brotherhood;  a 
brotherhood  woven  of  spiritual  ties,  and  so  made  in- 
destructible. And  this  brotherhood  overleaped  social 
barriers;  it  bridged  separating  gulfs  betwixt  classes.  It 
made  society  not  only  purer,  but  closer  and  stronger.  The 
social  offices  of  religion  are  seldom  adequately  realised; 
and  these  offices  never  found  a  happier  or  more  effective 
expression  than  in  Wesley's  societies. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SOLDIER    METHODISTS 

A  GREAT  religious  movement  is,  of  course,  misread  if  it  is 
translated  into  merely  personal  terms.  It  resembles  the 
stirring  of  a  sea-tide.  It  is  the  result  of  planetary  forces. 
It  rises  from  unsounded  deeps.  It  makes  itself  felt  at 
widely  distant  points.  It  fills,  with  its  sound  and  foam, 
at  the  same  moment  a  hundred  little  bays.  Certainly 
the  great  religious  movement  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
though  it  has  the  Wesleys  and  Whitefield  as  its  most 
commanding  figures,  extended  far  beyond  their  personal 
influence,  it  ran  like  some  viewless  contagion  through 
the  very  air ;  and  some  of  its  developments,  with  which 
neither  Whitefield  nor  the  Wesleys  had  personally  much 
to  do,  were  of  a  remarkable  character. 

The  forces  of  the  great  revival,  for  example,  reached 
the  army  and  produced  there  some  very  picturesque  re- 
sults. The  British  Army  in  Flanders  is  best  known  to  the 
man  in  the  street  by  the  famous  saying  in  "  Tristram 
Shandy"  describing  its  swearing  performances.  That 
unfortunate  army,  with  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  for 
Commander-in-chief,  marching  and  fighting  beside  strange 
allies,  on  foreign  soil,  and  for  a  cause  about  which  it  knew 
little  and  cared  less,  was,  no  doubt,  in  very  evil  conditions. 
Religion  amongst  the  Huguenots  of  Henry  of  Navarre,  or 
Cromwell's  Ironsides,  or  the  sturdy  Dutch  Protestants  of 
William  of  Orange,  is  thinkable.  But  who  can  imagine 
any  of  the  tempers  and  emotions  of  religion  breaking  out 
spontaneously  in  the  ill-led,  hard-swearing,  hard-drinking, 
hard-fighting  British  Army  in  Flanders  in  the  days  of 
Fontenoy  and  Dettingen !  And  yet  the  literature  of 
Methodism  gives  us  glimpses  of  the  inner  life  of  that 
army  of  which  historians  are  unconscious,  but  which  have 
amazing  human  interest. 

In  May  1744,  for  example,  with  Dettingen  a  year  be- 

225  p 


226  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

hind  and  Fontenoy  not  quite  a  year  in  front,  the  British 
Army  lav  camped  on  the  side  of  a  hill  near  Brussels,  and 
not  far  from  Waterloo.  One  afternoon  a  cluster  of  red- 
coats set  up  a  little  flag  on  the  hill-slope  across  the  valley 
and  began  to  sing.  The  soldiers  came  streaming  from  the 
camp  and  gathered  round.  A  British  private,  the  very 
type  of  his  class — square-bodied,  short-necked,  with  broad 
face,  scanty  eyebrows,  and  inexpressive  eyes — began  to 
preach.  His  voice  carried  far,  but  it  was  the  voice  oi 
an  untaught  man.  He  talked  in  such  English  as  a 
peasant  might  use,  and  which  peasants  would  have  under- 
stood, of  sin  and  judgment,  of  Christ  and  His  salvation. 
The  crowd  about  him — war-battered  soldiers,  familiar  with 
the  hardships  of  the  march,  the  roughness  of  camp  life, 
the  perils  of  the  battle-line — hung  breathlessly  on  his 
lips.  They  numbered  some  thousands ;  the  sound  of  their 
singing  filled  the  valley. 

And  this  scene  was  repeated  in  British  camps  every 
day  —  sometimes  twice,  sometimes  thrice  a  day !  The 
preacher  was  John  Haime,  afterwards  one  of  Wesley's 
helpers,  and  already,  though  he  had  not  yet  seen  Wesley's 
face,  one  of  the  fruits  of  the  great  religious  movement  of 
which  Wesley  was  the  symbol. 

Here,  again,  is  a  little  battle  vignette,  taken  from  the 
bloody  field  of  Fontenoy:  Two  Methodist  soldiers  meet 
each  other  in  the  darkness  after  the  fight  is  over.  They 
had  both  taken  part  in  that  long  and  bloody  struggle 
on  the  road  which  runs  betwixt  Fontenoy  and  the  wood 
of  Barri.  They  had  stood  in  the  stubborn  ranks,  while 
scourged  on  front  and  flank,  by  the  French  guns;  they 
had  fallen  back  at  last  with  the  broken  but  unconquer- 
able fragments  of  the  British  column.  Haime  tells  the 
story  of  how  they  fared  in  the  battle : — 

"  When  W.  Clements  had  his  arm  broken  by  a  musket-ball,  they 
would  have  carried  him  out  of  the  battle.  But  he  said,  '  No ;  I 
have  an  arm  left  to  hold  my  sword.  I  will  not  go  yet.'  When  a 
second  shot  broke  his  other  arm  he  said,  '  I  am  as  happy  as  I  can 
be  out  of  paradise.'  John  Evans,  having  both  his  legs  taken  off 
by  a  cannon-ball,  was  laid  across  a  cannon  to  die ;  where,  as  long 
as  he  could  speak,  he  was  praising  God  with  joyful  lips. 

"  For  my  own  part  I  stood  the  hottest  fire  of  the  enemy  for  about 
seven  hours.  But  I  told  my  comrades,  '  The  French  have  no  ball 


'       SOLDIER    METHODISTS  227 

that  will  kill  me  this  day.'  After  about  seven  hours  a  cannon-ball 
killed  my  horse  under  me.  An  officer  cried  out  aloud,  '  Haime, 
where  is  your  God  now  ? '  I  answered,  '  Sir,  He  is  here  with  me, 
and  He  will  bring  me  out  of  this  battle.'  Presently  a  cannon-ball 
took  off  his  head.  My  horse  fell  upon  me  and  some  cried  out, 
'  Haime  is  gone  ! '  But  I  replied,  '  He  is  not  gone  yet.  .  .  .'  I 
had  a  long  way  to  go  through  all  our  horse,  the  balls  flying  on 
every  side.  And  all  the  way  lay  multitudes  bleeding,  groaning,  or 
just  dead.  Surely  I  was  in  the  fiery  furnace ;  but  it  did  not  singe 
a  hair  of  my  head.  The  hotter  the  battle  grew,  the  more  strength 
was  given  me.  I  was  as  full  of  joy  as  I  could  contain." 

Then  Haime  tells  how  he  meets  his  comrade  in  the 
confusion  of  the  night,  after  the  sound  of  the  guns  had 
died  away : — 

"  As  I  was  quitting  the  field  I  met  one  of  our  brethren  with  a  little 
dish  in  his  hand,  seeking  water.  I  did  not  know  him  at  first,  being 
covered  with  blood.  He  smiled  and  said,  '  Brother  Haime,  I  have 
got  a  sore  wound.'  I  asked,  '  Have  you  got  Christ  in  your  heart  ? ' 
He  said,  '  I  have,  and  I  have  had  Him  all  this  day.  I  have  seen 
many  good  and  glorious  days,  with  much  of  God,  but  I  never  saw 
more  of  it  than  this  day.  Glory  be  to  God  for  all  His  mercies  ! ' " l 

What  stranger  illustration  of  the  supernatural  power  of 
religion  can  be  imagined  than  that  afforded  by  the  picture 
of  these  two  smoke-blackened  soldiers,  who,  coming  out 
of  a  great  fight,  tell  each  other  how  signally  they  have 
realised  the  comforting  presence  of  God  all  through  it ! 

The  fashion  in  whicn  the  great  revival  affected  the 
army,  the  material  upon  which  it  worked  there,  the 
phenomena  it  produced,  are  best  illustrated  by  personal 
narrative.  Wesley,  who  had  a  wise  interest  in  religion 
as  translated  into  the  terms  of  personal  experience,  made 
his  helpers  write  the  story  of  their  religious  life,  and 
published  many  of  these  in  The  Arminian  Magazine, 
and  amongst  these  are  the  biographies  of  some  who  had 
been  soldiers.  They  are  true  human  documents  in  the 
modern  sense,  marked  with  reality  in  every  sentence; 
and  as  the  records  of  actual  human  beings  caught  in  the 
sweep  of  a  great  religious  movement  they  are  of  real 
historical  value. 

As  an  example  may  be  taken  the  story  of  Stanniforth, 

1  "  Lives  of  Early  Methodist  Preachers,"  vol.  i.  p.  169. 


228  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

who  was  a  soldier  till  he  was  twenty-nine  years  of  age, 
and  a  preacher  of  the  Gospel  under  Wesley  for  fifty  years 
afterwards. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  imagine  a  rougher  or  more 
hopeless  bit  of  humanity  than  Stanniforth  in  his  younger 
days,  as  described  by  himself.  The  son  of  a  Sheffield 
cutler  —  wild,  sullen,  untaught,  ungrateful  —  he  sinned 
grossly,  and  sinned  without  remorse.  He  had  the  appe- 
tites of  an  animal,  and  apparently  no  more  moral  sense 
than  an  animal.  He  drifted  into  soldiership,  drawn  by 
the  charms  of  rough  soldier  companionship.  In  the  story 
of  his  youth  a  mother's  figure  is  dimly  seen,  who  wept 
over  her  lawless  son,  hung  round  vile  haunts  to  fetch 
the  worthless  lad  home,  mourned  over  his  vices,  bought 
him  off,  at  the  cost  of  all  her  little  savings,  when  he  had 
enlisted.  "  All  this,"  records  Stanniforth,  "  made  not  the 
least  impression  upon  me.  I  felt  no  gratitude  to  either 
God  or  man."  He  re-enlisted,  and  marched  off,  leaving  his 
broken-hearted  mother  weeping  in  the  street;  and  Stan- 
niforth, in  his  autobiography,  adds  one  dreadful  touch. 
"  I  was  not  only  fierce  and  passionate,  but  also  sullen  and 
malicious  without  any  feeling  of  humanity.  Instead  of 
weeping  with  my  mother,  I  even  rejoiced  in  her  sorrow !" 

Stanniforth's  story  gives  us  a  grim  picture  of  the  brutal 
life,  and  of  the  brutal  vices,  of  a  British  soldier  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  He  was  of  a  wild  and  stubborn 
spirit,  familiar  with  the  military  prison  and  the  cruel 
military  punishments  of  that  day;  and  more  than  once 
narrowly  escaped  being  shot  off-hand  for  breaches  of 
soldierly  duty.  In  1743  his  regiment  sailed  for  Flanders 
and  joined  the  army  a  few  days  after  the  battle  of  Det- 
tingen.  If  the  British  Army  of  Flanders  swore  terribly 
in  those  days,  Private  Stanniforth  certainly  contributed 
more  than  his  personal  share  to  its  exercises  in  blas- 
phemy. The  far-off  and  broken-hearted  mother  sent 
him  sorrowful  letters,  and  little  gifts  of  her  hard-earned 
savings ;  but  this  drunken,  plundering,  blaspheming 
private  had  no  touch  of  gratitude  for  her  love. 

At  this  stage  Stanniforth  made  the  acquaintance  of 
another  private,  a  lad  from  Barnard  Castle,  named  Mark 
Bond,  who  was  in  every  detail  of  training,  character,  and 
temper  the  exact  opposite  of  Stanniforth.  But  betwixt 


•       SOLDIER    METHODISTS  229 

the  two  there  sprang  up  a  friendship  of  the  antique  sort, 
and  such  as  cannot  be  easily  paralleled.  Bond  and  Stan- 
niforth  were  simply  Damon  and  Pythias  translated  into 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  transformed  into  British 
privates.  Bond's  story  was  very  simple.  He  was  the 
son  of  godly  parents  and  feared  God  from  three  years 
old.  As  a  child  he  was  assailed  with  strange  and  terrible 
temptations.  He  was,  in  Stanniforth's  words,  "  violently 
and  continually  importuned  to  curse  God " ;  and  one 
fatal  day,  when  he  was  not  yet  seven  years  old,  he  went 
into  a  field,  crept  under  the  hedge,  and  with  his  childish 
lips  whispered  the  dreadful  words — words  which,  to  his 
boyish  conscience,  sealed  his  doom,  and  which  certainly 
blackened  his  life  for  many  years  to  come.  Where  did 
this  child  of  seven  learn  anything  about  "blaspheming 
God  "  ?  He  kept  his  dreadful  secret ;  concluded  his  per- 
dition was  certain,  and  carried  an  almost  broken  heart 
about  with  him.  At  eighteen  he  enlisted  with  the  hope 
that  he  would  be  soon  killed !  Soldiership  was  for  him 
a  circuitous  form  of  suicide.  This  sad-faced  private, 
who  plodded  silently  in  the  ranks,  who  never  drank  or 
swore,  and  was  always  meditating  on  that  far-off'  childish 
blasphemy,  is  surely  a  very  odd  figure  in  the  army  of 
that  day. 

Bond  came  under  the  teaching  of  the  soldier-preacher 
Haime,  and  stepped  into  the  gladness  and  freedom  of  a 
divine  forgiveness.  And  the  new  forces  in  him  must 
find  utterance.  He  must  tell  some  one  of  his  deliver- 
ance :  and  by  some  strange  impulse  he  chose  the  worst 
man  in  the  company,  Stanniforth,  as  his  confidant.  A 
stranger  story  to  stranger  ears  was  never  yet  told.  "  He 
came  to  me,"  records  Stanniforth,  "and  recorded  what 
God  had  done  for  his  soul.  But  this  was  an  unknown 
language  to  me ;  I  understood  it  not ;  and  soon  as  he 
was  gone  I  used  to  make  sport  of  all  he  said."  But 
Bond  was  patient  and  invincible  in  his  affection  for  his 
wild  comrade ;  and  at  last  he  conquered  him. 

" '  He  met  me  one  time,'  says  Stanniforth,  '  when  I  was  in  distress, 
having  neither  food,  money,  nor  credit.  On  his  coming  and  ask- 
ing me  to  go  and  hear  the  preaching,  I  said,  "You  had  better  give 
me  something  to  eat  or  drink ;  for  I  am  both  hungry  and  dry." 


230  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

He  took  me  to  a  sutler's,  and  gave  me  both  meat  and  drink.  Then 
he  took  me  by  the  hand,  and  led  me  to  a  place  erected  about  half  a 
mile  from  the  camp.  I  had  no  desire  to  hear  anything  of  religion, 
but  on  the  contrary  went  with  great  reluctance.  Who  it  was  that 
was  preaching  I  do  not  know.  But  this  I  know,  that  God  spake 
to  my  heart.  In  a  few  minutes  I  was  in  deep  distress — full  of 
sorrow,  under  a  deep  sense  of  sin  and  danger,  but  mixed  with  a 
desire  for  mercy.  And,  now,  I  that  never  prayed  in  my  life  was 
continually  calling  upon  God.  In  time  past  I  could  shed  tears  for 
nothing  ;  but  now  the  rock  was  rent ;  a  fountain  was  opened,  and 
tears  of  contrition  ran  plentifully  down  my  cheeks.  A  cry  after 
God  was  put  into  my  heart,  which  has  never  yet  ceased,  and,  I 
trust,  never  will.' " : 

Bond  rejoiced  over  his  troubled  comrade  with  running 
tears.  A  strange  and  instant  transformation  took  place 
in  Stanniforth's  habits.  The  rough,  drunken,  plundering, 
hard-swearing  private  was  a  new  man.  He  drank  no 
more.  He  fell  strangely  silent.  He  had  the  sharpest 
hunger  for  religious  services.  He  went  to  one  of  the 
little  soldier-gatherings,  and  stood,  awkward  and  solitary, 
amongst  his  comrades.  One  came  up  and  asked  him 
how  long  he  had  come  to  the  preaching.  "I  answered, 
'last  night  was  the  first  time.'  He  took  me  aside,  and 
said,  '  Let's  go  to  prayer.'  I  said, '  I  cannot  pray ;  I  never 
prayed  in  my  life.' "  His  comrade  made  him  kneel  down 
beside  him,  and  just  then  Bond  came  up.  After  prayer 
Stanniforth  was  asked  if  he  had  a  Bible,  or  any  good 
book.  "  I  said,  '  No.'  I  knew  not  that  I  ever  had  read 
any."  Bond  had  as  his  chief  treasure  a  piece  of  an  old 
Bible.  "  Take  it,"  he  said ;  "  I  can  do  better  without  it 
than  thou." 

Stanniforth  was  still  wholly  uncomforted,  but  his  com- 
rades tried  in  vain  to  tempt  him  back  to  his  old  haunts. 
"  I  had  now  a  tender  conscience,"  he  says ;  "  I  could 
neither  drink,  swear,  game,  nor  plunder  any  more.  I 
would  not  take  so  much  as  an  apple,  a  bunch  of  grapes 
— not  anything  that  was  not  my  own." 

Bond  took  charge,  not  only  of  the  spiritual  condition 
of  his  troubled  comrade,  but  of  his  affairs  generally. 
"He  inquired  into  all  my  affairs,  and,  rinding  I  had 

1  "  Lives  of  Early  Methodist  Preachers,"  vol.  ii.  p.  156. 


SOLDIER   METHODISTS  231 

contracted  some  debts,  said,  '  The  followers  of  Christ 
must  be  first  just,  and  then  charitable.  We  will  put 
both  our  pay  together,  and  live  as  hard  as  we  can ;  and 
what  we  spare  will  pay  the  debt.' "  What  finer  example 
of  chivalrous  friendship  can  be  imagined ! 

The  two  comrades  were  now  on  fire  with  a  common 
impulse ;  they  must  rebuke  sin.  They  must  tell  the 
strange  and  wonderful  story  of  Christ  and  His  love. 
Old  comrades  listened,  stared,  were  melted,  joined  them; 
and,  as  Stanniforth  records,  "  the  flame  spread  through 
all  the  camp,  so  that  we  had  a  large  number  of  hearers." 

At  Ghent,  where  the  army  was  in  camp  for  some 
weeks,  Bond  and  Stanniforth  hired  two  rooms,  one  for 
preaching,  one  for  private  meetings,  and  here  little  crowds 
of  soldiers  met  twice  every  day.  All  this  time,  however, 
Stanniforth  himself  was  in  the  deepest  spiritual  distress. 
His  spiritual  condition,  indeed,  was  a  paradox.  He  was 
living  a  godly  life  yet  carrying  the  burden  of  unforgiven 
sin.  By  a  strange  gate  he  at  last  found  entrance  into  a 
world  of  light. 

"I  thought  myself  the  most  nrserable  creature  on  earth,  far 
beneath  the  brute  and  inanimate  creatures ;  all  of  which  answered 
the  end  of  their  creation,  which  I  have  never  done  !  From  twelve 
at  night  till  two  it  was  my  turn  to  stand  sentinel  at  a  dangerous 
post.  I  had  a  fellow-sentinel ;  but  I  desired  him  to  go  away, 
which  he  willingly  did.  As  soon  as  I  was  alone  I  kneeled  down, 
and  determined  not  to  rise,  but  to  continue  crying  and  wrestling 
with  God  till  He  had  mercy  on  me.  How  long  I  was  in  that  agony 
I  cannot  tell.  But  as  I  looked  up  to  heaven  I  saw  the  clouds 
open  exceeding  bright,  and  I  saw  Jesus  hanging  on  the  cross.  At 
the  same  moment  these  words  were  applied  to  my  heart,  '  Thy 
sins  are  forgiven  thee.'  My  chains  fell  off;  my  heart  was  free. 
All  guilt  was  gone,  and  my  soul  was  filled  with  unutterable  peace. 
I  loved  God  and  all  mankind,  and  the  fear  of  death  and  hell  was 
vanished  away.  I  was  filled  with  wonder  and  astonishment." l 

Who  is  not  moved  by  this  picture  of  a  lonely  sentinel 
at  midnight  keeping  watch  in  front  of  an  enemy's  camp, 
praying,  weeping,  struggling  ?  And  suddenly  there  breaks 
upon  him  out  of  the  aarkness  a  vision  as  wonderful  as 
that  which  fell  upon  Paul  outside  the  gates  of  Damascus. 

1  "Lives  of  Early  Methodist  Preachers,"  vol.  ii.  p.  161. 


232  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Was  the  vision  real  ?  Who  can  undertake  to  say  how 
God  may  manifest  Himself  to  such  a  soul  as  that  of  this 
untaught  and  despairing  soldier?  When  Bond  the  next 
morning  met  his  comrade,  no  words  of  explanation  were 
needed.  Stanniforth's  face  told  the  tale.  "I  know  God 
has  set  your  soul  at  liberty,"  cried  Bond.  "I  see  it  in 
your  countenance." 

The  work  spread  now  with  new  energy.  The  meetings 
were  more  frequent,  and  drew  larger  crowds.  "God  in- 
creased our  number  every  day,  so  that  we  had  some  in 
almost  every  regiment." 

Stanniforth  had  his  first  experience  of  battle  at  Fon- 
tenoy.  Just  before  the  fight  began  his  regiment  was 
ordered  to  stand  at  ease.  The  men  threw  themselves 
on  the  ground.  Stanniforth  tells  how  he  went  a  few 
paces  ahead,  flung  himself  with  his  face  in  the  grass,  and 
"prayed  that  God  would  deliver  me  from  all  fear,  and 
enable  me  to  behave  as  a  Christian  and  good  soldier. 
Glory  be  to  God,  He  heard  my  cry,  and  took  away  all 
my  fear !  I  came  into  the  ranks  again,  and  had  both 
peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost." 

And  how  did  these  preaching  and  praying  Methodist 
soldiers  fight  ?  On  that  subject  there  is  abundant  evidence. 
Wesley  records  dining  with  the  colonel  of  one  of  the 
regiments  which  served  in  Flanders,  who  told  him,  "  No 
men  fight  like  those  who  fear  God.  I  had  rather  com- 
mand five  hundred  such  than  any  regiment  in  the  army." 
Their  religion  touched  the  rough  spirits  of  these  soldier 
Methodists  to  a  strange  tenderness,  even  towards  their 
enemies.  "  On  the  29th,"  says  Haime,  "  we  marched  close 
to  the  enemy,  and  when  I  saw  them  in  their  camp  my 
bowels  moved  toward  them  in  love  and  pity  for  their 
souls."  That  was  a  strange  and  noble  mood  of  feeling 
for  a  British  private  in  sight  of  the  enemy's  columns  ! 

" '  Some  days  before  the  late  battle,'  says  another  of  these 
Methodist  soldiers,  '  one  of  them,  standing  at  his  tent-door,  broke 
out  into  raptures  of  joy,  knowing  his  departure  was  at  hand,  and 
was  so  filled  with  the  love  of  God  that  he  danced  before  his  com- 
rades. In  the  battle,  before  he  died,  he  openly  declared,  "  I  am 
going  to  rest  from  my  labours  in  the  bosom  of  Jesus."  I  believe 
nothing  like  this  was  ever  heard  of  before,  in  the  midst  of  so  wicked 
an  army  as  ours.  Some  were  crying  out  in  their  wounds,  "  I  am 


SOLDIER   METHODISTS 

going  to  my  Beloved."  Others,  "  Come,  Lord  Jesus,  come  quickly." 
And  many  that  were  not  wounded  were  crying  to  their  Lord  to  take 
them  to  Himself.  There  was  such  boldness  in  the  battle  among 
this  little  despised  flock  that  it  made  the  officers,  as  well  as  common 
soldiers,  amazed.  And  they  acknowledge  it  to  this  day.' " 1 

Fontenoy  is  one  of  the  most  bloody  fights  in  history. 
It  is  difficult  to  name  a  battle  in  which  there  was  less 
of  leadership  amongst  the  generals,  and  more  of  dogged 
courage  in  the  ranks.  Stanniforth's  regiment  shared  in 
the  fiercest  struggle  of  the  day.  "  All  the  day,"  he  records, 
"  I  was  hi  great  spirits,  and  as  composed  in  my  mind  as 
if  I  had  been  hearing  a  sermon.  I  neither  desired  life 
nor  death,  but  was  entirely  happy  in  God."  After  the  fight 
was  over  the  surviving  Methodists  gathered  together. 

"We  then  began  to  inquire  who  of  our  society  was  gone  home. 
We  missed  many  out  of  our  regiment.  One  was  saying,  '  Oh  how 
happy  I  am  ! '  And  just  as  he  spoke  a  cannon-ball  came  and  took 
off  his  head.  We  lost  four  preachers  and  many  of  the  society. 
But  my  dear  companion,  with  the  other  brethren  in  the  regiment, 
were  still  as  the  heart  of  one  man.  Such  was  the  religion  of  the 
soldiers  at  this  time,  before  any  of  them  were  corrupted  by  new 
opinions !  I  then  thought,  '  This  state  of  life  is  the  only  one  to 
love  and  serve  God  in.  I  would  not  change  it  for  any  other  under 
the  sun,  upon  any  consideration  whatever.' " 

Stanniforth's  regiment  was  recalled  to  England  by  the 
rising  of  the  Highlands  in  favour  of  Prince  Charlie.  After 
Culloden,  the  regiment  was  in  barracks  at  Canterbury, 
and  Stanniforth  fell  in  love,  was  married ;  but  on  his 
very  wedding-day  was  called  upon  to  join  his  regiment, 
then  under  sudden  orders  for  Holland.  He  kissed  his 
new-married  wife  and  marched  off.  He  took  part  in  the 
tierce  and  utterly  useless  fight  in  front  of  Maestricht,  and 
here  he  lost  his  faithful  comrade  Bond.  The  commander, 
Prince  Charles,  abandoned  his  rear-guard  to  destruction, 
and  marched  off  with  his  main  body.  "  We  lay  waiting 
for  orders  to  retreat,"  says  Stanniforth,  "  but  the  Prince 
forgot  to  send  them,  being  busy  with  his  cups  and  his 
ladies."  The  rear-guard  was  attacked  by  overwhelming 

1  "  Lives  of  Early  Methodist  Preachers,"  vol.  ii.  p.  168. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  169. 


234  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

forces,  fought  stubbornly  until  almost  cut  to  pieces,  and 
then  fell  back.     Says  Stanniforth : — 

"  All  this  time  I  found  a  constant  waiting  upon  God.  All  fear 
was  removed.  I  had  no  tremor  on  my  spirits,  and  the  presence  of 
God  was  with  me  all  the  day  long.  My  dear  companion  was  on 
my  right  hand,  and  had  been  all  the  night.  As  we  were  both  in 
the  front  rank,  a  musket-ball  came  and  went  through  his  leg.  He 
fell  down  at  my  feet,  looked  up  in  my  face  with  a  smile,  and 
said,  '  My  dear,  I  am  wounded.'  I  and  another  took  him  in  our 
arms,  and  carried  him  out  of  the  ranks,  while  he  was  exhorting  me 
to  stand  fast  in  the  Lord.  We  laid  him  down,  took  our  leave  of 
him,  and  fell  into  our  ranks  again.  In  our  farther  retreat  I  again 
met  with  my  dear  friend,  who  had  received  another  ball  through 
his  thigh.  But  his  heart  was  full  of  love,  and  his  eyes  full  of 
heaven.  I  may  justly  say,  '  Here  fell  a  great  Christian,  a  good 
soldier,  a  faithful  friend.' " 

After  his  discharge  from  the  army  Stanniforth  became 
one  of  Wesley's  preachers,  and  carried  into  his  preaching 
the  energy  and  courage  of  his  soldier  days.  He  died  an 
old  man,  almost  his  last  words  being  a  fragment  of  a 
Methodist  hymn : — 

"My  God  I  am  Thine; 

What  a  comfort  divine, 
What  a  blessing  to  know  that  my  Jesus  is  mine." 

Haime  was  a  soldier  of  another  type,  and  went  through 
very  curious  experiences.  He  was  a  Dorsetshire  lad,  vio- 
lent in  temper,  gross  in  speech,  utterly  lawless  in  conduct. 
He,  like  Bond,  was  visited  with  what  is  to-day  an  almost 
unthinkable  spiritual  experience — a  violent  temptation  to 
blaspheme  God.  He  yielded  at  last,  in  the  silence  of  his 
heart  framed  the  dreadful  words,  and  was  then  told  by  the 
tempter,  "Thou  art  inevitably  damned."  The  unhappy 
youth  was  broken-hearted.  He  swung  for  a  time  betwixt 
plans  of  suicide  and  wild  rushes  into  vicious  pleasure. 
The  terrors  of  sin  haunted  him.  He  had  experiences 
which  can  hardly  be  paralleled  out  of  monkish  literature. 

"One  night,  as  I  was  going  to  bed,  I  durst  not  lie  down  without 
prayer.  So,  falling  upon  my  knees,  I  began  to  consider,  '  What 
can  I  pray  for?  I  have  neither  the  will  nor  the  power  to  do  any- 


SOLDIER    METHODISTS  235 

thing  good.'  Then  it  darted  into  my  mind,  'I  will  not  pray, 
neither  will  I  be  beholden  to  God  for  mercy.'  I  arose  from  my 
knees  without  prayer,  and  laid  me  down;  but  not  in  peace.  I 
never  had  such  a  night  before.  I  was  as  if  my  very  body  had  been 
in  a  fire ;  and  I  had  a  hell  in  my  conscience.  I  was  thoroughly 
persuaded  the  devil  was  in  the  room." 

He  was  violently  tempted  to  repeat  the  act  of  blas- 
phemy against  God,  and  one  day  when  the  temptation 
was  upon  him  in  overpowering  violence  he  records, 
"  Having  a  stick  in  my  hand,  I  threw  it  towards  heaven, 
against  God,  with  the  utmost  enmity.  Immediately  I 
saw  in  the  clear  element  a  creature  like  a  swan,  but 
much  larger,  part  black,  part  brown.  It  flew  at  me,  and 
went  just  over  my  head.  Then  it  went  about  forty  yards, 
lighted  on  the  ground,  and  stood  staring  upon  me.  This 
was  in  a  clear  day,  about  twelve  o'clock." 

Haime  now  enlisted  in  a  dragoon  regiment,  leaving  his 
wife  and  children.  When  his  regiment  was  on  the  march 
to  Scotland  the  first  gleam  of  light  broke  into  the  un- 
happy soldier's  darkness.  He  came  across  Bunyan's 
"  Grace  Abounding  to  the  Chief  of  Sinners  " ;  and  across 
the  space  of  more  than  a  hundred  years  the  voice  of  the 
Bedfordshire  tinker  talked  to  the  heart  of  this  tormented 
soldier. 

"  One  day,  as  I  walked  by  the  Tweed  side,  I  cried  aloud,  being 
all  athirst  for  God,  '  Oh  that  Thou  wouldst  hear  my  prayer,  and 
let  my  cry  come  up  before  Thee  ! '  The  Lord  heard.  He  sent  a 
gracious  answer.  He  lifted  me  up  out  of  the  dungeon.  He  took 
away  my  sorrow  and  fear,  and  filled  my  soul  with  peace  and  joy 
in  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  stream  glided  swiftly  along,  and  all 
nature  seemed  to  rejoice  with  me.  I  was  truly  free ;  and  had  I 
had  any  to  guide  me  I  need  never  more  have  come  into  bondage." 

But  the  gleam  of  light  soon  faded,  and  again  poor 
Haime  walked  in  a  world  of  terrors.  "  Many  times,"  he 
says,  "  I  stopped  in  the  street  afraid  to  go  one  step  farther 
lest  I  should  step  into  hell." 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  experiences  of  such  men  as 
Haiine  and  Bond  ?  They  were  not  born  under  the  shadow 
of  any  dreadful  creed.  No  gloomy  theology  poisoned 
their  imagination.  They  practically  had  no  theology, 


236  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

good  or  bad.  The  secret  lies  in  the  dim,  unconscious 
sense  of  the  terrors  of  an  offended  God,  awakened  in  the 
human  conscience,  unaccompanied  by  any  vision  of  the 
forgiving  mercy  of  God  in  Christ. 

Haime's  regiment  was  ordered  to  Flanders,  and  slowly, 
with  many  struggles  and  many  relapses,  he  found  his 
way  into  light  and  gladness.  He  wrote  to  Wesley,  and 
Wesley's  reply  is  interesting  as  furnishing  a  glimpse  of 
the  correspondence  he  carried  on  with  multitudes  of  all 
ranks. 

"  '  It  is  a  great  blessing,'  wrote  Wesley,  '  whereof  God  has  already 
made  you  a  partaker  ;  but  if  you  continue  waiting  upon  Him  you 
will  see  greater  things  than  these.  This  is  only  the  beginning  of 
the  kingdom  of  Heaven  which  He  will  set  up  in  your  heart.  If 
He  give  you  any  companion  in  the  narrow  way,  it  is  well ;  and 
it  is  well  if  He  do  not.  So  much  the  more  will  He  teach  and 
strengthen  you  by  Himself.  He  will  strengthen  you  in  the  secret 
of  your  heart.  But  by  all  means,  miss  no  opportunity.  Speak 
and  spare  not.  Declare  what  God  has  done  for  your  soul.  Regard 
not  worldly  prudence.  Be  not  ashamed  of  Christ,  or  of  His  word, 
or  of  His  servants.  Speak  the  truth  in  love,  even  in  the  midst  of 
a  crooked  generation.' "  * 

Haime  acted  on  Wesley's  counsel,  and  commenced  to 
speak  of  Christ  to  his  comrades.  He  took  part  in  the 
battle  of  Dettingen,  and  his  account  of  it  is  curiously 
interesting. 

"  I  had  no  sooner  joined  the  regiment  than  my  left-hand  man 
was  shot  dead.  I  cried  to  God,  and  said,  '  In  Thee  have  I  trusted ; 
let  me  never  be  confounded.'  My  heart  was  filled  with  love,  peace, 
and  joy  more  than  tongue  can  express.  I  was  in  a  new  world. 
I  could  truly  say,  '  Unto  you  that  believe  He  is  precious.'  I 
stood  the  fire  of  the  enemy  seven  hours.  And  when  the  battle 
was  over  I  was  sent  out  with  a  party  of  men  to  find  the  baggage- 
waggon,  but  returned  without  success.  In  the  meanwhile  the 
army  was  gone,  and  I  knew  not  which  way.  I  went  to  the  field 
where  the  battle  was  fought,  but  such  a  scene  of  human  misery 
did  I  never  behold  !  It  was  enough  to  melt  the  most  obdurate 
heart.  I  knew  not  now  which  way  to  take,  being  afraid  of  falling 
into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  But  as  it  began  to  rain  hard,  I  set 
out,  though  not  knowing  where  to  go;  till,  hearing  the  beat  of 

1  "  Lives  of  Early  Methodist  Preachers,"  vol.  ii.  p.  158. 


SOLDIER    METHODISTS  237 

the  drum,  I  went  towards  it,  and  soon  rejoined  the  army.  But  I 
could  not  find  the  tent  which  I  belonged  to,  nor  persuade  them  to 
take  me  in  at  any  other.  So,  being  very  wet  and  much  fatigued, 
I  wrapped  myself  up  in  my  cloak  and  lay  down  and  fell  asleep. 
And  though  it  still  rained  upon  me,  and  the  water  ran  under  me, 
I  had  as  sweet  a  night's  rest  as  ever  I  had  in  my  life." 

After  the  battle  the  army  fell  back  to  Flanders,  and 
remained  in  quarters  near  Ghent.  Haime  tells  the  story 
of  how  he  began  meetings  there  :— 

"  Being  in  Ghent,  I  went  one  Sunday  morning  to  the  English 
Church  at  the  usual  time.  But  neither  minister  nor  people  came. 
As  I  was  walking  in  the  church,  two  men  belonging  to  the  train 
came  in,  John  Evans  and  Pitman  Stag.  One  of  them  said,  '  The 
people  are  long  in  coming.'  I  said,  '  Yet  they  think,  however  they 
live,  of  going  to  heaven  when  they  die.  But  most  of  them,  I  fear, 
will  be  sadly  disappointed.'  They  stared  at  me,  and  asked  me 
what  I  meant.  I  told  them,  '  Nothing  unholy  can  dwell  with  a 
holy  God.'  We  had  a  little  more  talk,  and  appointed  to  meet  in 
the  evening.  We  took  a  room  without  delay,  and  met  every  night 
to  pray  and  read  the  Holy  Scriptures.  In  a  little  time  we  were 
as  speckled  birds,  as  'men  wondered  at.'  But  some  began  to 
listen  under  the  window,  and  soon  after  desired  to  meet  with  us. 
Our  meetings  were  soon  sweeter  than  our  food." 

It  must  have  been  difficult  to  maintain  religious  ser- 
vices amongst  troops  constantly  on  the  march ;  but  Haime 
explains  their  methods.  "  Our  general  plan  was,  as  soon 
as  we  were  settled  in  any  camp,  to  build  a  tabernacle, 
containing  two,  three,  or  four  rooms,  as  we  saw  con- 
venient. One  day  three  officers  came  to  see  our  chapel, 
as  they  called  it.  They  asked  many  questions.  One  in 
particular  asked  me  what  I  preached.  I  answered,  '  I 
preach  against  swearing,  whoring,  and  drunkenness;  and 
exhort  men  to  repent  of  all  their  sins,  that  they  may  not 
perish.'  He  began  swearing  horribly,  and  said,  if  it  were 
in  his  power,  he  would  have  me  whipped  to  death.  I 
told  him,  '  Sir,  you  have  a  commission  over  men ;  but  I 
have  a  commission  from  God  to  tell  you,  you  must  either 
repent  of  your  sins  or  perish  everlastingly.'  " 

The  fire,  fed  with  such  courage,  spread.  "  We  had  now," 
says  Haime,  "  three  hundred  in  the  society,  and  six 
preachers  beside  myself.""  Fontenoy  sadly  reduced  the 


238  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

little  godly  band ;  but  still  the  good  work  was  main- 
tained. Officers  not  seldom  were  amongst  Haime's 
hearers,  and  one  day  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  came 
and  stood  amongst  the  crowd  who  listened. 

But  human  experience  is  liable  to  tragical  changes. 
Haime  was  tempted,  and  fell.  He  gives  the  date  with 
sorrowful  exactness.  "April  6,  1746,  I  was  off  my  watch, 
and  fell  by  a  grievous  temptation.  It  came  as  quick  as 
lightning,  I  knew  not  if  I  were  in  my  senses;  but  I  fell, 
and  the  Spirit  of  God  departed  from  me."  For  twenty 
years  poor  Haime  walked  in  the  shadow  of  that  fall. 
He  passed  through  religious  experiences  which  resemble 
nothing  so  much  as  the  darkest  circles  in  Dante's  inferno. 
His  grief  broke  his  health  and  affected  his  very  senses. 

"I  could  not  see  the  sun  for  more  than  eight  months.  Even  in 
the  clearest  summer  day  it  always  appeared  to  me  like  a  mass  of 
blood.  At  the  same  time  I  lost  the  use  of  my  knees.  I  cannot 
describe  what  I  felt.  I  could  truly  say,  '  Thou  hast  sent  fire  into 
my  bones.'  I  was  often  as  hot  as  if  I  were  burning  to  death. 
Many  times  I  looked  to  see  if  my  clothes  were  set  on  fire.  I  have 
gone  into  a  river  to  cool  myself ;  but  it  was  all  the  same.  For 
what  could  quench  the  wrath  of  His  indignation  that  was  let  loose 
upon  me  ?  At  other  times,  in  the  midst  of  summer,  I  have  been 
so  cold  that  I  knew  not  how  to  bear  it.  All  the  clothes  I  could  put 
on  had  no  effect,  but  my  flesh  shivered,  and  my  very  bones  quaked. 
God  grant,  reader,  thou  and  I  may  never  feel  how  hot  or  how  cold 
it  is  in  hell ! '' 

But  no  matter  in  what  deep  waters  poor  Haime  waded, 
he  still  preached,  warned,  exhorted.  "  Some  may  inquire, 
what  could  move  me  to  preach  while  I  was  in  such  a 
forlorn  condition  ?  They  must  ask  of  God,  for  what  I 
cannot  tell.  His  ways  herein  are  past  finding  out."  He 
tells  again :  "  When  Satan  has  strongly  suggested,  just  as 
I  was  going  to  preach,  '  I  will  have  thee  at  last,'  I  have 
answered  (sometimes  with  too  much  anger),  '  I  will  have 
another  out  of  thy  hand  first.'  And  many,  while  I  was 
myself  in  the  deep,  were  truly  convinced,  and  converted 
to  God." 

It  is  not  easy  to  imagine  a  figure  at  once  more  pathetic 
and  more  heroic  than  that  of  this  soldier-preacher,  carry- 
ing the  burden  of  that  far-off  sin,  and  yet  preaching  to 


SOLDIER   METHODISTS  239 

others  a  Gospel  he  did  not  himself  realise.  After  his 
discharge  from  the  army  Haime  went  to  Wesley  and 
asked  to  be  accepted  as  one  of  his  preachers.  Wesley 
looked  with  his  shrewd  but  kindly  eyes  on  the  worn  face 
of  the  veteran,  and  accepted  him.  Later  he  made  him 
for  a  while  his  personal  companion,  and  took  him  with 
him  when  travelling.  Haime  found  his  way  into  clear 
experience  at  last  and  died  when  nearly  eignty  years  of 
age.  His  last  prayer,  spoken  with  failing  voice,  was: 
"0  Almighty  God,  Who  dwellest  in  light  which  no 
mortal  can  approach,  and  where  no  unclean  thing  can 
enter,  cleanse  the  thoughts  of  our  hearts;  grant  us  con- 
tinually sweet  peace,  quietness,  and  assurance  of  Thy 
favour ! " 

Such  men  as  Haime,  Stanniforth,  and  Bond  are  types 
of  a  class;  they  are  figures  which  symbolise  the  forces 
of  a  spiritual  revolution.  These  men,  during  the  early 
stages  of  their  religious  life  at  all  events,  owed  little  to 
Wesley  personally.  Haime,  in  his  first  letter  to  Wesley, 
says :  "  I  am  a  stranger  to  you  in  the  flesh.  I  know  not 
if  I  have  seen  you  above  once,  when  I  saw  you  preaching 
on  Kennington  Common.  And  then  I  hated  you,  as 
much  now  as  (by  the  grace  of  God)  I  love  you."  They 
went  through  dreadful  struggles  before  they  saw  his  face. 
But  Wesley  was  their  natural  leader.  His  sympathy 
with  the  army  was  always  alert  and  keen.  He  records 
in  his  Journal,  speaking  of  Ireland,  "  The  first  call  is  to 
the  soldiery."  Wesley's  character  was  one  that  specially 
appealed  to  what  may  be  called  the  soldierly  imagination 
— nis  courage,  his  instinct  for  discipline,  his  look  and 
accent  of  command.  He  was  the  one  visible  figure,  too,  in 
the  whole  spiritual  movement  by  which  these  soldiers  were 
affected.  They  talked  of  him  on  the  march,  wrote  to  him 
from  their  camps,  passed  from  hand  to  hand  as  treasures 
the  letters  he  had  written  to  some  of  them.  And  when 
they  were  discharged  they  naturally  joined  his  Societies. 

These  brave  Methodist  soldiers  lie  in  forgotten  graves 
scattered  over  the  Continent;  but  it  is  worth  while  to 
recall  their  memory.  They  show  how  the  new  spiritual 
forces  sweeping  through  England  reached  classes  that 
seemed  quite  beyond  the  reach  of  the  preachers  and 
leaders  of  that  movement. 


CHAPTER  X 

HOW    THE    WORK   SPREAD  I     SCOTLAND 

IT  was  certain,  in  advance,  that  a  spiritual  revolution, 
such  as  that  which  was  now  in  progress,  could  not  be 
confined  within  narrow  geographical  limits.  The  very 
winds  would  carry  it  over  land  and  sea. 

Whitefield  was  the  avant  courier  of  the  movement, 
the  Prince  Rupert  of  the  new  spiritual  army.  Wesley 
had  less  imagination  and  more  practical  sense  than  his 
great  comrade.  Remoter  horizons  did  not  tempt  him. 
His  mind  was  concentrated  on  the  work  immediately 
under  his  hands.  With  the  wise  instinct  of  a  great 
leader,  he  loved  to  make  each  step  he  took  secure  before 
taking  the  next.  Ten  years,  therefore,  in  advance  of 
Wesley,  Whitefield  invaded  Scotland.  The  Erskines,  who 
headed  a  secession  from  the  Scotch  Church  in  the  early 
days  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  had  formed  what 
was  known  as  the  Associate  Presbytery,  urged  him  to 
come,  and  in  July  1741  he  visited  Dunfermline  and  had 
a  conference  with  the  elder  Erskine. 

Whitefield  had  at  least  one  point  of  ardent  agreement 
with  the  Erskines.  He  was  a  convinced  Calvinist,  and 
intercourse  with  Jonathan  Edwards  in  America  had  given 
his  Calvinism  a  more  resolute  temper  than  ever.  But 
there  was  also  one  fundamental  discord  betwixt  them. 
The  Seceders,  after  their  stubborn  Scottish  fashion,  were 
fanatical  on  the  question  of  Church  government.  They 
were  as  eager  for  the  rights  of  the  people  in  the  election 
of  ministers,  as  they  were  for  the  true  doctrine  of  the 
eternal  decrees,  or  of  the  divinity  of  Christ.  The  "  wicked- 
ness "  of  the  patronage  laws  was  to  them  as  detestable  as 
the  worst  forms  of  Arianism.  Like  their  natural  enemies, 
the  sacerdotalists,  their  theology  had  no  perspective. 

They  wished,  of  course,  to  capture  Whitefield.  "  Unless 
you  come  with  a  design  to  meet  and  abide  with  us  of  the 


240 


HOW    THE    WORK    SPREAD  :    SCOTLAND  241 

Associate  Presbytery  I  would  dread  the  consequence  of 
your  coming,"  wrote  Ralph  Erskine.  But  Whitefield  was 
the  last  man  in  the  world  to  be  imprisoned  within  any 
narrow  ecclesiastical  boundaries.  He  met  the  Associate 
Presbytery,  a  set  of  grave  and  venerable  men.  He  records 
that,  after  a  brief  conversation,  they  were  proceeding  to 
choose  a  Moderator : — 

"I  asked  them  for  what  purpose?  They  answered,  to  discourse 
and  set  me  right  about  the  matter  of  Church  government,  and  the 
Solemn  League  and  Covenant.  I  replied  they  might  save  them- 
selves that  trouble,  for  I  had  no  scruples  about  it,  and  that  settling 
Church  government  and  preaching  about  the  Solemn  League  and 
Covenant  was  not  my  plan." l 

Whitefield  added  that  "he  had  never  yet  made  the 
Solemn  League  and  Covenant  the  object  of  his  study, 
being  busy  about  matters  of  greater  importance."  This, 
in  the  ears  of  the  venerable  seceders,  was  nothing  less 
than  flat  blasphemy.  "Every  pin  in  the  tabernacle  was 
precious,"  cried  out  several  angry  divines.  In  their  eyes, 
indeed,  the  "  pin "  was  apt  to  seem  more  precious  than 
the  whole  tabernacle !  Whitefield  was  asked  to  preach 
only  for  them,  until  he  had  got  further  light. 

"  I  asked  why  only  for  them  1  Mr.  Ralph  Erskine  said,  '  They 
were  the  Lord's  people.'  I  then  asked  whether  there  were  no 
other  Lord's  people  but  themselves,  and,  supposing  all  others  were 
the  devil's  people,  they  certainly  had  more  need  to  be  preached 
to,  and  therefore  I  was  more  and  more  determined  to  go  out  into 
the  highways  and  hedges,  and  that  if  the  Pope  himself  would  lend 
me  his  pulpit  I  would  gladly  proclaim  the  righteousness  of  Christ 
therein."  2 

To  one  correspondent  who  had  tried  to  bring  White- 
field  to  correct  ecclesiastical  views  the  great  preacher 
expounded  with  much  simplicity  his  entire  theory  of 
Church  order.  "  I  wish,"  he  said,  "  you  would  not  trouble 
yourself  or  me  in  writing  about  the  corruption  of  the 
Church  of  England.  I  believe  there  is  no  Church  perfect 
under  heaven ;  but  as  God,  by  His  Providence,  is  pleased 
to  send  me  forth  simply  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  all,  I 

1  Butler's  "  Wesley  and  Whitefield  in  Scotland,"  p.  23. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  24. 


242  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

think  there  is  no  need  of  casting  myself  out."  The  at- 
tempt, in  a  word,  to  imprison  Whitefield  in  a  little  net  of 
ecclesiastical  theories  was  like  trying  to  call  some  wide- 
winged  sea-bird  from  the  upper  spaces  of  the  air,  and  to 
shut  it  up  in  a  cage. 

Whitefield  at  once  commenced  open-air  preaching  in 
Edinburgh.  Scotland  is  a  land  of  good  preachers,  but 
it  had  never  yet  listened  to  such  preaching  as  that  of 
Whitefield.  His  deep  melodious  voice  rang  over  vast 
crowds  as  with  the  vibrations  of  a  great  bell.  His  ardour, 
the  note  of  passion  that  ran  through  his  rhetoric,  the 
trembling  cadences  of  his  eloquence,  the  visible  tears 
running  down  his  face,  the  flame-like  zeal  which  burned 
in  every  syllable  and  gave  energy  to  every  gesture — these 
fairly  carried  away  the  Scottish  crowds.  Scottish  preach- 
ing, as  a  rule,  appeals  to  the  reason  rather  than  to  the 
emotions,  and  ordinarily  a  Scottish  audience  hates  either 
to  see  emotion  or  to  express  it.  But  there  are  fountains 
of  feeling  hidden  deep  in  the  rugged  Scottish  character, 
depths  whose  very  existence  is  often  unsuspected  by 
their  own  possessors ;  and  Whitefield  somehow  could 
reach  these. 

He  paid,  in  all,  fourteen  visits  to  Scotland,  and  never 
before  or  since  were  such  oratorical  triumphs  won  by  any 
single  voice  over  Scottish  audiences.  He  preached  in 
the  fields  round  Edinburgh  to  crowds  of  20,000  people. 
In  his  second  visit  great  rows  of  seats  were  erected  in 
the  Hospital  Park,  and  let  out  to  hearers  at  fixed  prices. 
The  concentrated  and  sustained  energy  of  Whitefield's 
work  in  Scotland  may  well  seem  in  these  modern  times 
incredible.  On  Sunday  he  preached  four  times  in  Edin- 
burgh to  vast  crowds,  and  lectured  in  the  evening  in  a 
private  house.  On  Monday  he  preached  three  times  and 
again  lectured  at  night.  On  Tuesday  he  preached  seven 
times,  and  writes,  at  the  close  of  the  amazing  day,  "  I  am 
now  as  fresh  as  when  I  arose  in  the  morning ! "  Of  what 
substance  was  such  flesh  and  blood  built  ? 

Later,  and  when  in  the  full  rush  of  crowded  services, 
he  calmly  records  in  his  Journal,  "  I  am  exceedingly 
strengthened,  both  in  soul  and  body,  and  cannot  now  do 
well  without  preaching  three  times  a  day."  Preaching  did 
not  exhaust  his  strength  ;  it  seemed  to  renew  it ! 


HOW   THE   WORK    SPREAD  :   SCOTLAND          243 

Butler,  in  his  very  interesting  work,  "John  Wesley 
and  George  Whitefield  in  Scotland,"  says  that  Whitefield 
affected  the  Scottish  towns  by  his  preacning  as  Savonarola 
affected  Florence ;  but  Whitefield's  preaching  was  more 
intensely  spiritual  than  that  of  the  great  Florentine, 
and  took  a  loftier  flight.  Perhaps  Whitefield's  work  in 
Scotland  reached  its  highest  point  in  Cambuslang.  Here 
a  Scottish  divine,  McCulloch,  a  man  of  fine  gifts  and 
intense  zeal,  had  prepared  the  way  for  Whitefield.  The 
scene  when  Whitefield  preached  may  be  told  in  his  own 
words : — 

"At  mid-day  I  came  to  Cambuslang  and  preached  at  two  to 
a  vast  body  of  people ;  again  at  six,  and  again  at  nine  at  night. 
Such  commotions,  surely,  were  never  heard  of,  especially  at 
eleven  o'clock  at  night.  For  an  hour  and  a  half  there  was  much 
weeping,  and  so  many  falling  into  such  deep  distress,  expressed 
in  various  ways,  as  cannot  be  described.  The  people  seemed  to 
be  slain  in  scores.  Their  agonies  and  cries  were  exceedingly 
affecting.  In  the  fields  all  night  might  be  heard  the  voices  of 
prayer  and  praise."1 

Later,  still  more  extraordinary  effects  were  produced : — 

"I  never  before  saw  such  a  universal  stir.  The  motion  fled 
as  swift  as  lightning  from  one  end  of  the  auditory  to  the  other. 
Thousands  were  bathed  in  tears — some  wringing  their  hands, 
others  almost  swooning,  and  others  crying  out  and  mourning  over 
a  pierced  Saviour.  All  night,  in  different  companies,  persons  were 
praying  to  God  and  praising  Him." 

That  Whitefield  taught  the  spiritual  life  of  the  whole 
Scottish  Church  to  beat  for  the  moment  with  quicker 
pulse,  cannot  be  doubted.  And  yet  he  left  no  permanent 
mark  on  Scottish  religion.  Edinburgh  to-day  no  more 
bears  his  signature  than  does  Florence  that  of  Savonarola. 

The  Seceders  who  had  invited  Whitefield  to  Scotland 
viewed  his  success  with  alarm  and  disgust.  Since  he 
would  not  march  under  their  flag  he  was  to  them  nothing 
less  than  an  enemy.  They  appointed  a  day  of  fasting 
and  humiliation  for  the  countenance  given  to  Whitefield, 
"  a  priest  of  the  Church  of  England  who  had  sworn  the 

1  Butler,  p.  36. 


244  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

oath  of  supremacy  and  abjured  the  Solemn  League  and 
Covenant."  All  the  results  of  his  preaching  they  bluntly 
ascribed  to  the  devil — so  blind  can  fanaticism  be ! 

In  1751,  ten  years  after  Whiten*  eld  had  crossed  the 
Border,  Wesley  was  invited  by  a  pious  soldier  quartered  at 
Musselburgh,  Captain  Gallatin,  to  visit  him.  Whitefield 
strongly  advised  nim  not  to  go.  He  told  him  bluntly : — 

"You  have  no  business  there,  for  your  principles  are  so  well 
known  that  if  you  spoke  like  an  angel  none  would  hear  you  ;  and 
if  they  did,  you  would  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  dispute  with  one 
and  another  from  morning  to  night." 

Wesley,  it  must  be  admitted,  had  some  obvious  dis- 
qualifications for  a  Scottish  tour.  He  was  known  to 
abhor  the  Calvinistic  theology.  He  was  himself  a 
preacher  of  what  might  be  called  the  Scottish  type,  ap- 
pealing to  the  reason  and  the  conscience  rather  than 
the  emotions,  and  he  lacked  the  overwhelming  emotional 
power  of  Whitefield.  His  preaching,  therefore,  would, 
for  his  hearers  in  Scotland,  be  without  the  charm  of 
novelty.  But  as  Wesley  wrote  to  Whitefield : — 

"  If  God  sends  me,  people  will  hear.  And  I  will  give  them  no  pro- 
vocation to  dispute  ;  for  I  will  studiously  avoid  controverted  points, 
and  keep  to  the  fundamental  truths  of  Christianity;  and  if  any 
still  begin  to  dispute,  they  may,  but  I  will  not  dispute  with  them." 

Wesley's  first  visit  to  Scotland  lasted  two  days,  but  he 
returned  two  years  afterwards,  in  1753,  and  from  that 
time  a  visit  to  Scotland  every  second  or  third  year 
formed  part  of  his  regular  work.  He  visited  Scotland  in 
all  twenty-two  times,  and  if  his  preaching  never  produced 
the  immediate  and  wonderful  effects  of  Whitefield's, 
yet  he  more  permanently  influenced  Scotland  than  did 
his  great  comrade.  He  created  Scottish  Methodism,  a 
branch  of  the  great  Methodist  tree  which,  if  dwarfed  in 
mere  bulk  by  other  branches,  has  borne  very  rich  fruit. 

The  elder  Erskine  succeeded  for  a  moment  in  kindling 
much  wrathful  feeling  against  Wesley  by  reviving  the 
Calvinistic  controversy.  He  republished  in  Scotland,  with 
an  angry  preface,  the  letters  which  had  passed  betwixt 
Wesley  and  Hervey,  the  author  of  "  Theron  and  Aspasio," 


HOW    THE    WORK    SPREAD  :    SCOTLAND  245 

and  Wesley  had  to  realise  of  what  shrewish  bitterness  in 
theological  matters  the  Scottish  temper  is  capable. 

"  '  The  Seceders,'  he  says,  '  who  have  fallen  in  my  way  are  more 
uncharitable  than  the  Papists  themselves.  I  never  yet  met  a 
Papist  who  avowed  the  principle  of  murdering  heretics.  But  a 
Seceding  minister  being  asked,  "  Would  not  you,  if  it  was  in  your 
power,  cut  the  throats  of  all  the  Methodists  ? "  replied  directly, 
"  Why,  did  not  Samuel  hew  Agag  in  pieces  before  the  Lord  ? "  I 
have  not  yet  met  a  Papist  in  this  kingdom  who  would  tell  me  to 
my  face  all  but  themselves  must  be  damned;  but  I  have  seen 
Seceders  enough  who  make  no  scruple  to  affirm  none  but  them- 
selves could  be  saved." 

But  the  Seceders,  with  their  bitter  spirit,  did  not  re- 
flect the  general  temper.  Wesley  was  listened  to  every- 
where by  great  crowds,  and  was  shown  great  honour. 
Only  once,  while  preaching  in  the  open  air,  was  an  act 
of  rudeness  shown  to  him.  More  than  one  Scottish  city 
presented  him  with  its  freedom.  He  found  in  Lady  Max- 
well, in  Edinburgh,  and  in  Dr.  Gillies,  at  Glasgow,  friends 
and  helpers  of  quenchless  loyalty  and  great  influence. 
Whitefield  says  in  one  of  his  letters  at  the  time  that 
Wesley  was  making  in  Scotland  "a  great  mistake"  in 
forming  societies  after  the  pattern  of  his  English  work. 
But  Wesley  had  too  profound  a  knowledge,  both  of 
human  nature  and  of  the  religious  life,  to  believe  that 
his  converts  would  survive  if  they  were  left  without  the 
shelter  and  the  stimulus  of  spiritual  fellowship.  And 
what  Whitefield  regarded  as  Wesley's  "  mistake  "  in  Scot- 
land was  in  reality  the  secret  of  his  enduring  work  there. 

In  organising  these  societies,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Wesley 
was  but  folio  whig  a  noble  Scottish  precedent.  The 
Scottish  reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century,  like  the 
Lollards  of  the  fifteenth  century,  formed  meetings  for 
"  prophesying,"  which  were  almost  the  exact  analogue  of 
Wesley's  class-meetings.  These  religious  societies  were 
strong  in  Scotland  during  the  Covenanting  period,  and 
were  the  deep  and  vigorous  roots  which  Kept  religion 
alive  on  Scottish  soil.  It  is  possible,  indeed,  to  say  that 
the  Scottish  reformers  had  anticipated  many  features  of 
Wesley's  own  work.  Intense  spiritual  life,  of  course, 
under  any  sky,  and  set  in  any  historical  conditions,  will 


246  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

naturally  express  itself  in  living  fellowship.  And  the 
meetings  for  "prophesying"  in  Knox's  time,  with  the 
class-meetings  in  Wesley's  Church,  are  independent  ex- 
pressions of  a  universal  spiritual  impulse. 

It  is  still  amusing  to  read  Wesley's  descriptions  of  his 
Scottish  audiences.  They  astonished  him  by  their  order, 
their  gravity,  and  their  absence  of  emotion.  "  They  hear 
much,  know  everything,  and  feel  nothing,"  he  says. 
"  They  are  so  wise  that  they  need  no  more  knowledge,  and 
so  good  that  they  need  no  more  religion."  The  impas- 
sibility of  his  Scottish  hearers  provoked  Wesley  to  the 
plainest  speech.  "  I  seldom  speak,"  he  says,  "  so  roughly 
as  in  Scotland,  but  I  never  knew  any  in  Scotland  offended 
at  plain  dealing ;  in  this  respect  the  North  Britons  are  a 
pattern  to  all  mankind."  "  I  am  amazed  at  this  people," 
he  writes  again.  "  I  use  the  most  cutting  words,  and 
apply  them  in  the  most  pointed  way ;  still  they  hear,  but 
feel  no  more  than  the  seats  they  sit  upon." 

He  learned  to  cherish  the  highest  respect  for  Scottish 
sense.  "  Only  show  them,"  he  says,  "  the  reasonableness 
in  Scotland,  and  they  will  conform  to  anything."  But 
Wesley  was  not  in  the  least  disposed  to  vary  his  methods 
to  suit  Scottish  tastes.  The  Scotch  love  a  fixed  pastorate  ; 
if  only  because  the  stubborn  instinct  of  property  in  the 
average  Scotsman  is  affronted  by  having  to  share  even  his 
minister  with  somebody  else.  So  Wesley  was  urged  to 
modify  the  itinerancy  of  his  helpers.  He  wrote  in  reply : — 

"  While  I  live,  itinerant  preachers  shall  be  itinerants ;  I  mean, 
if  they  choose  to  remain  in  connection  with  me.  The  society  at 
Greenock  are  entirely  at  their  own  disposal ;  they  may  either  have 
a  preacher  between  them  and  Glasgow,  or  none  at  all.  But  more 
than  one  between  them  they  cannot  have.  I  have  too  much  regard 
both  for  the  bodies  and  souls  of  our  preachers  to  let  them  be  con- 
fined to  one  place  any  more.  I  have  weighed  the  matter,  and  will 
serve  the  Scots  as  we  do  the  English,  or  leave  them." 

One  of  his  helpers  in  Glasgow  had  so  far  conformed 
to  Scottish  usage  as  to  organise  a  kirk-session.  Wesley 
writes  to  him  from  Cork: — 

"'Sessions  ! '  ' Elders ! '  We  Methodists  have  no  such  custom, 
neither  any  of  the  Churches  of  God  that  are  under  our  care.  I 
require  you,  Jonathan  Crowther,  immediately  to  dissolve  that 


HOW   THE   WORK   SPREAD  :   SCOTLAND          247 

session  (so-called)  at  Glasgow.  Discharge  them  from  meeting  any 
more.  And  if  they  will  leave  the  society,  let  them  leave  it.  We 
acknowledge  only  preachers,  stewards,  and  leaders  among  us,  over 
which  the  assistant  in  each  circuit  presides.  You  ought  to  have 
kept  to  the  Methodist  plan  from  the  beginning.  Who  had  my 
authority  to  vary  from  it  ?  If  the  people  of  Glasgow,  or  any  other 
place,  are  weary  of  us,  we  will  leave  them  to  themselves.  But  we 
are  willing  to  be  still  their  servants,  for  Christ's  sake,  according  to 
our  own  discipline,  but  no  other." 

Wesley  loved  his  Scottish  work  and  his  Scottish  hearers, 
and  he  maintained  his  tours  in  Scotland  to  the  last  years 
of  his  life.  Some  of  the  most  touching  pictures  we  have 
of  Wesley  in  old  age,  pressing  on  with  quenchless  ardour 
in  his  work,  when  his  very  senses  began  to  fail  him,  are 
under  Scottish  skies.  He  was  eighty-eight  years  of  age 
when  he  paid  his  twenty-second  visit  to  Scotland,  and  he 
planned  his  journey  and  his  preaching  services  on  as 
daring  a  scale  as  ever.  Here  is  a  picture  given  by  one  of 
his  helpers  of  his  last  visit  to  a  Scottish  town,  Dumfries : — 

"  He  came  from  Glasgow  that  day  (about  seventy  miles),  but 
his  strength  was  almost  exhausted,  and  when  he  attempted  to 
preach  very  few  could  hear  him.  His  sight  was  likewise  much 
decayed,  so  that  he  could  neither  read  the  hymn  or  text.  The 
wheels  of  life  were  ready  to  stand  still ;  but  his  conversation  was 
agreeably  edifying,  being  mixed  with  the  wisdom  and  gravity  of 
a  parent  and  the  artless  simplicity  of  a  child." 

Wesley's  own  record  of  the  service  is,  "I  travelled 
yesterday  nearly  eighty  miles,  and  preached  in  the  evening 
without  any  pain.  The  Lord  does  what  pleases  Him." 

Butler,  in  his  work  on  the  influence  of  the  Oxford 
Methodists  on  Scottish  religion,  says  that  Wesley  was  for 
Scotland  "a  spiritual  splendour";  and  if  Methodism  as 
a  separate  body  does  not  bulk  large  on  the  Scottish  land- 
scape, yet  its  influence  on  the  spiritual  life  of  Scotland 
has  been  deep  and  enduring. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HOW    THE    WORK   SPREAD  :    IRELAND 

IRELAND  was  for  Wesley  a  new  field,  strange,  wild,  unhappy 
—the  very  paradox  of  civilisation ;  a  field  in  which,  not 
by  any  unkindness  of  nature  or  any  ordinance  of  God,  but 
only  by  the  follies  and  hates  of  mankind,  good  things 
became  evil.  Law  inspired  crime.  Religion  bred  hate. 
Freedom  became  the  author  of  tyranny.  The  Ireland  of 
the  early  Georges  and  of  the  penal  laws !  Was  there  any 
other  patch  of  soil  in  the  civilised  world  where  the  defeat 
of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  was  so  nearly  absolute,  and 
the  task  of  religion  more  hopeless  ? 

Lord  Hutchinson,  it  will  be  remembered,  condensed  the 
Ireland  of  that  day  into  one  terrible  sentence :  "  A  corrupt 
aristocracy,  a  ferocious  commonalty,  a  distracted  Govern- 
ment, a  divided  people."  Society  was  one  tangled  web 
of  dreadful  hates.  The  Protestant  hated  and  oppressed 
the  Catholic ;  the  Anglican  hated  and  oppressed  the 
Nonconformist;  the  Romanist  hated  and,  where  he  had 
the  chance,  slew  both.  Green  says :  "  After  the  surrender 
of  Limerick  every  Catholic  Irishman,  and  there  were  five 
Irish  Catholics  to  every  Irish  Protestant,  was  treated  as 
a  stranger  and  a  foreigner  in  his  own  country."1  The 
Government  was  in  the  hands  of  one-twelfth  of  the 
population,  and  was  used  by  them  to  fill  their  pockets  at 
the  expense  of  the  other  eleven-twelfths.  Class  feuds 
were  nourished  by  law.  The  Irish  Catholic  was  practically 
an  outlaw  under  his  own  native  skies;  the  Irish  Pres- 
byterian lived  under  the  harrow  of  the  Test  Act;  and 
even  the  Irish  Anglican  had  to  stand  hat  in  hand  before 
an  Anglican  who  had  the  merit  of  being  English. 

But  it  is  the  dreadful  paradox  of  Irish  affairs  in  the 
eighteenth  century  which  most  impresses  the  student  in 

l  "  Short  History,"  p.  81 1. 

248 


HOW    THE   WORK    SPREAD  :    IRELAND  249 

the  twentieth  century.  It  represents  an  inversion,  almost 
without  parallel  in  history,  of  all  natural  order.  English- 
men had  won  freedom  in  England  only  to  deny  it  to 
Irishmen  in  Ireland.  The  two  noblest  forces  in  human 
society  are  the  authority  of  law  and  the  authority  of 
religion.  They  are,  or  should  be,  allies.  But  in  the 
Ireland  of  that  day  they  were  sworn  and  deadly  foes. 
The  main  object  of  the  law  in  Ireland  was  the  extirpation 
of  what  four  out  of  every  five  of  its  inhabitants  held  as 
their  religion.  Nowhere  was  Protestantism — or  rather 
what  mistook  itself  for  Protestantism — so  strong,  and 
nowhere  had  it  failed  so  absolutely.  Nowhere  else  was 
Romanism  so  harried  and  handicapped ;  and  nowhere  else 
was  it  so  nearly  triumphant!  It  was  persecuted;  and 
persecution  hardened  its  priests  into  fanatics,  it  ennobled 
them  into  martyrs. 

The  Protestantism  which  Ireland  in  those  sad  days 
knew  had  borrowed  the  persecuting  policy  of  Rome : 
and  persecution  in  its  case  was  twin-sister  to  greed.  It 
was  as  eager  to  pick  the  pockets  of  its  victim,  or  to  con- 
fiscate his  farm,  as  to  punish  his  deplorably  corrupt 
theology.  The  Irish  peasant,  in  his  turn,  was  wedded 
to  his  religion  not  simply  by  spiritual  forces — often  not 
in  the  least  by  spiritual  forces — but  by  a  cluster  of  forces 
which  were  the  contradiction  of  everything  spiritual : 
by  class  hate ;  by  the  memory  of  inexpiable  wrongs, 
wrongs  sometimes  endured,  sometimes  committed;  by 
loyalty  to  his  class ;  by  his  ignorance,  in  a  word,  and  by 
his  hates.  And  never  was  ignorance  so  complete  or  hate 
so  bitter !  They  were  ancestral  hates,  that  had  their  roots 
in  history,  and  were  kept  living  and  deep  by  oppression. 

And  never  did  Protestantism  sin  so  fatally  against  its 
own  genius  as  in  the  Ireland  of  that  day.  The  Protestant 
vicar  took  every  tenth  potato  from  the  Romish  peasant  for 
his  own  support ;  but  he  made  no  attempt  to  convert  him, 
to  understand  him,  to  talk  his  language,  or  to  enlighten 
his  ignorance.  Lecky's  picture  of  the  Irish  Church  of  that 
day  has  in  it  a  touch  of  the  iron  severity  of  Tacitus : — 

"  The  Irish  Establishment  was  the  Church  of  the  poor  in  the 
sense  that  they  paid  for  it,  but  in  no  other.  Its  adherents  were 
certainly  less  than  one-seventh  of  the  population,  and  they  be- 


250  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

longed  exclusively  to  the  wealthiest  class.  And  this  astonishing 
Establishment  was  mainly  supported  by  tithes.  The  mass  of 
the  Irish  Catholics  were  cottiers  living  in  an  abject,  hopeless 
poverty  hardly  paralleled  in  Europe,  and  deriving  a  bare  subsis- 
tence for  themselves  and  their  families  from  little  plots  of  potato 
ground,  often  of  not  more  than  ten  or  fifteen  perches.  The  tenth 
part  of  the  produce  of  these  plots  was  rigidly  exacted  from  the 
wretched  tenant  for  the  benefit  of  a  clergyman  who  was  in  violent 
hostility  to  his  religion,  whom  in  many  cases  he  never  saw,  and 
from  whose  ministrations  he  derived  no  benefit  whatever."  l 

"  '  A  system  of  half  persecution  was  pursued,'  says  Southey,  '  at 
once  odious  for  its  injustice  and  contemptible  for  its  inefficacy. 
Good  principles  and  generous  feelings  were  thereby  provoked  into 
an  alliance  with  superstition  and  priestcraft ;  and  the  priests,  whom 
the  law  recognised  only  for  the  purpose  of  punishing  them  if  they 
discharged  the  forms  of  their  office,  established  a  more  absolute 
dominion  over  the  minds  of  the  Irish  people  than  was  possessed 
by  the  clergy  in  any  other  part  of  the  world.  It  would  be 
difficult,  in  the  whole  compass  of  history,  to  find  another  instance 
in  which  such  various  and  such  powerful  agencies  concurred  to 
degrade  the  character  and  to  blast  the  prosperity  of  a  nation.'"2 

What  type  of  character  did  these  evil  conditions  create  ? 
The  Irish  are  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  influences 
which  stream  upon  them  from  history,  from  legislation, 
and  from  the  Church.  "  No  people,"  says  Lecky, "  brooded 
more  upon  old  wrongs,  clung  more  closely  to  old  habits, 
were  more  governed  by  imagination,  association  and 
custom."  And  history,  the  law,  the  Church,  alike  com- 
bined to  corrupt  them.  To  quote  Lecky  again : — 

"They  were  half-naked,  half-starved,  utterly  destitute  of  all 
providence,  and  of  all  education,  liable  at  any  time  to  be  turned 
adrift  from  their  holdings,  ground  to  the  dust  by  three  great 
burdens — rack  rents,  paid  not  to  the  landlord  but  to  the  middle- 
man ;  tithes,  paid  to  the  clergy — often  the  absentee  clergy — of 
the  Church  of  their  oppressors;  and  dues,  paid  to  their  own 
priests."  3 

And  it  was  upon  a  field  so  hopeless  as  this,  and  sown 
so  thickly  with  evil  tares,  that  Wesley  was  about  to 
step.  Southey  says  that  "  all  the  circumstances  were 

1  Lecky,  vol.  ii.  p.  197.         -  Southey,  vol.  ii.  p.  107. 
3  Lecky,  vol.  i.  p.  241 


HOW  THE  WORK  SPREAD:  IRELAND     251 

as  favourable  for  the  progress  of  Methodism  in  Ireland 
as  they  were  adverse  to  it  in  Scotland,"  and  he  proceeds 
to  cite  these :  the  failure  of  the  Established  Church,  &c. 
But  this  is  an  absurd  inversion  of  fact.  In  Scotland 
Wesley  was  at  least  a  Protestant  speaking  to  Protestants. 
He  did.  not  represent  a  foreign  and  hated  race.  But  in 
Ireland  the  hate  of  a  Romanist  for  a  Protestant,  the  mis- 
trust of  an  Irishman  for  everything  English,  and  the 
bitterness  bred  of  political  wrongs  and  ancestral  hates, 
whose  origin  ran  back  into  far-off  centuries,  were  all 
against  him 

And  yet,  great  are  the  forces  of  simple  and  genuine 
religion !  By  the  magic  of  truth,  truth  with  love  as  its 
vehicle  and  minister,  Wesley  won  in  Ireland  a  success 
certainly  greater  than  that  he  won  in  Scotland,  and 
second  only  to  that  he  won  in  England.  What  Methodism 
did  in  Ireland  is  not  to  be  measured  by  the  chapels  built, 
the  circuits  formed,  the  societies  gathered.  Methodism 
was  the  earliest  and  noblest  of  those  healing  forces  which 
touched  Irish  history,  and  have  done  so  much  to  trans- 
figure it.  Here  was  a  form  of  religion  which  did  not  carry 
a  pike  in  one  hand,  and  a  writ  of  proscription  in  the 
other.  Here  were  messengers  of  Christ's  Gospel  whose 
chief  characteristic  was  not  a  ruthless  hunger  for  tithes 
from  the  pockets  of  those  who  hated  both  them  and  their 
creed.  Methodism  saved  Protestantism  as  a  spiritual 
force  in  Ireland.  It  did  something  to  arrest  that  dread- 
ful divorce  betwixt  classes  which  threatened  to  destroy 
society  itself.  When  it  stepped  on  to  Irish  soil  there 
became  visible  a  form  of  Protestantism  which  suffered 
persecution  instead  of  inflicting  it.  It  talked  the  language 
of  the  first  Christian  century,  and  had  something  at  least 
of  the  spirit  of  that  far-off  century — its  heroic  zeal,  its 
exultant  faith,  its  eager  and  tender  sympathy. 

Wesley  himself  brought  no  political  cure  to  Ireland,  and 
he  stood  as  resolutely  aloof  from  Irish  party  disputes  as 
he  did  from  Scottish  theological  quarrels.  But  he  looked, 
with  at  least  a  flash  of  the  clear  vision  of  a  Christian 
statesman,  into  the  black  mist  of  Irish  politics.  He  was 
a  "  King  and  Church  "  man,  with  a  strain  of  Oxford  Toryism 
in  his  very  blood.  And  yet,  as  far  as  Ireland  was  con- 
cerned, he  was,  in  judgment  and  sympathy,  a  Pittite 


252  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

before  Pitt !     This  is  how  he  explains  the  Romanism  of 
Ireland : — 

"  At  least  ninety-nine  in  a  hundred  of  the  native  Irish  remain 
in  the  religion  of  their  forefathers.  Nor  is  it  any  wonder  that 
those  who  are  born  Papists  generally  live  and  die  such,  when  the 
Protestants  can  find  no  better  ways  to  convert  them  than  penal 
laws  and  Acts  of  Parliament." 

He  relates  how,  with  the  book  before  him  on  the  saddle, 
and  riding  along  Irish  roads,  he  read  that  not  very  accu- 
rate work,  Sir  John  Davies's  "  Historic  Relation  Concern- 
ing Ireland,"  and  in  his  Journal  he  comments : — 

"  None  who  reads  these  can  wonder  that,  fruitful  as  it  is,  it 
was  always  so  thinly  inhabited  ;  for  he  makes  it  plain — (i)  That 
murder  was  never  capital  among  the  native  Irish ;  the  murderer 
only  paid  a  small  fine  to  the  chief  of  his  sept.  (2)  When  the 
English  settled  here,  still  the  Irish  had  no  benefit  of  the  English 
laws.  They  could  not  so  much  as  sue  an  Englishman.  80  the 
English  beat,  plundered,  yea,  murdered  them  at  pleasure.  Hence 
(3)  arose  continual  wars  between  them,  for  three  hundred  and 
fifty  years  together,  and  hereby  both  the  English  and  Irish  natives 
were  kept  few  as  well  as  poor." 

Wesley  adds  that  in  the  general  massacre  of  1641,  and 
the  war  that  followed,  "  not  so  few  as  a  million  men, 
women,  and  children  were  destroyed  in  four  years'  time  " ; 
a  bit  of  wildly  imaginative  arithmetic  which  proves  afresh 
how  difficult  it  is  for  those  who  live  near  great  historical 
events  to  see  their  true  size. 

Wesley's  mission  to  Ireland,  however,  was  first  and  last 
spiritual,  alike  in  its  methods  and  its  ends.  He  arrived  in 
Dublin  on  August  9,  1747.  It  was  Sunday,  the  church 
bells  were  ringing,  and  he  went,  after  his  manner,  straight 
to  the  service  in  St.  Mary's,  and  preached  in  the  same 
church  in  the  evening.  Methodism  had  already  found  a 
place  in  Dublin.  A  lay  helper  from  England,  Thomas 
Williams,  had  gathered  a  society  there,  and  had  hired  an 
old  Lutheran  chapel  as  a  preaching  place.  Here  Wesley 
preached  to  crowds  that  filled  the  chapel  yard  as  well  as 
the  chapel. 

He  spent  a  fortnight  in  Dublin,  and  studied  with  keen 
eyes  the  character  of  his  Irish  hearers.  There  was  no 


HOW  THE  WORK  SPREAD  :  IRELAND     253 

touch  in  them  of  Scottish  gravity,  with  its  unresponsive- 
ness  as  of  Scotch  granite  ;  and  none  of  the  boorisnness  of 
the  English  rustic.  These  new  hearers  were  quick-witted 
courteous,  impressionable ;  and,  as  Wesley  records,  "  an 
immeasurably  loving  people."  Later,  Wesley  found  that 
an  Irish  convert,  with  nis  Celtic  quickness  and  generosity, 
his  susceptibility  to  emotion,  nad  the  defects  of  his 
qualities.  "  The  waters,"  he  said,  grimly,  after  telling  the 
story  of  a  congregation  that  was  dissolved  in  tears  at 
his  sermon,  "  spread  too  wide  to  be  deep."  He  notes, 
too,  how  little  relation  the  Irish  peasant's  religion  often 
has  to  his  understanding.  Ignorance  in  his  case  does 
not  hinder  or  limit  devotion.  "  The  more  I  converse 
with  this  people,"  he  says,  "  the  more  I  am  amazed.  That 
God  hath  wrought  a  great  work  among  them,  is  manifest ; 
and  yet  the  main  of  them,  believers  and  unbelievers,  are 
not  able  to  give  a  rational  account  of  the  plainest  prin- 
ciples of  religion.  It  is  plain,  God  begins  His  work  at  the 
heart ;  then  '  the  inspiration  of  the  Highest  giveth  under- 
standing.' " 

After  only  a  fortnight's  work  in  Dublin,  Wesley  writes : 
"  If  my  brother  or  I  could  have  been  here  a  few  months  I 
question  if  there  might  not  have  been  a  larger  society  in 
Dublin  than  even  London  itself." 

But  two  weeks  after  he  had  left,  his  brother  Charles, 
accompanied  by  Charles  Perronet,  arrived,  and  took  up  his 
work ;  and  even  in  that  brief  interval  betwixt  the  departure 
of  one  brother  and  the  arrival  of  another,  the  changeful 
quality  of  Irish  temper  and  the  uneasy  jealousy  of  Romish 
priests  found  illustration.  The  priests  had  taken  alarm. 
Here  was  a  new  kind  of  Protestantism  that  had  for  their 
flocks  a  strange  magic.  It  must  be  arrested !  And  an 
Irish  priest  would  make  his  appearance  on  the  edge  of  a 
crowd  listening  to  a  Methodist  helper,  and  drive  off  his 
own  people  with  gestures  and  curses,  like  a  watch-dog 
harrying  a  flock  of  sheep  that  had  wandered  into  forbidden 
pastures.  A  Popish  mob  broke  into  the  Dublin  chapel, 
made  a  bonfire  of  the  seats  and  the  pulpit,  and  threatened 
to  murder  any  one  assembled  there.  The  blasts  of  mob 
violence  in  Ireland  usually  had  the  support  of  the  local 
authorities,  who  in  all  cases  were  Protestants;  and  who 
not  seldom  hated  Methodists  even  more  than  they  disliked 


254  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Papists.  Charles  Wesley  himself  was  stoned  through  the 
Dublin  streets.  A  woman  was  beaten  to  death  in  an 
assault  of  the  mob  on  one  of  the  Methodist  gatherings. 
One  of  Wesley's  helpers,  John  Beard,  died  as  the  result  of 
the  ill-usage  he  received,  and  was  the  first — but  not  the 
last — Methodist-  martyr  in  Ireland. 

Wesley's  second  visit  to  Ireland  (in  1748)  lasted  three 
months,  and  was  marked  by  intense  toil,  by  some  trium- 
phant results,  and  by  much  persecution.  He  found  that 
his  Irish  hearers  took  their  religion  lightly.  He  missed 
the  deep  convictions,  the  overwhelming  sense  of  sin,  which 
marked  his  English  and  Scotch  converts ;  and  so,  as  he 
records,  he  "  preached  on  the  terrors  of  the  law  in  the 
strongest  manner  of  which  he  was  capable."  Yet  "  still," 
he  says,  "  those  who  were  ready  to  eat  up  every  word  do  not 
appear  to  digest  any  part  of  it."  But  Wesley,  somehow — 
this  prim,  intense,  methodical,  and  unemotional  English- 
man— had  the  secret  of  winning  the  love  of  his  Irish 
hearers. 

Thus  at  Athlone  he  preached  to  a  vast  crowd  in  the 
market-place,  and  found  it  difficult  to  escape  from  the 
loving  throng  that  pressed  on  him.  He  broke  away  at 
last ;  but  a  mile  out  of  the  town,  on  a  hill- top  which  the 
road  crossed,  he  found  another  crowd  waiting  to  intercept 
him.  They  opened  the  way  for  him  till  he  reached  their 
midst,  then  closed  round  him  and  would  not  let  him  go. 
The  crowd  sang  hymn  after  hymn  together,  and  when  at 
last  Wesley  got  free  "  men,  women,  and  children  lifted  up 
their  voices  and  with  a  sound,"  Wesley  declares,  "  he  had 
never  heard  before."  "  Yet  in  a  little  while,"  he  adds,  with 
one  quick,  forerunning  vision  into  the  happier  world,  "  and 
we  shall  meet  to  part  no  more,  and  sorrow  and  sighing 
shall  flee  away  for  ever." 

The  fiercest  outbreak  of  popular  violence  was  at  Cork. 
Here  the  crowd  practically  took  possession  of  the  city 
under  the  leadership  of  an  itinerant  ballad-singer,  half  fool 
and  half  rogue,  named  Butler,  who  was  accustomed  to 
parade  the  streets  in  a  burlesque  of  clerical  attire,  with  a 
Bible  in  one  hand  and  a  bundle  of  ballads  in  the  other. 
The  magistrates  sympathised  with  the  crowd,  and  the 
Methodists  were  hunted  through  the  streets  like  vermin. 
An  appeal  to  the  Mayor  only  produced  the  answer  that 


HOW  THE  WORK  SPREAD  :  IRELAND     255 

Popish  priests  were  protected,  but  Methodists  were  not. 
Many  Methodists,  both  men  and  women,  were  beaten  with 
clubs  or  wounded  with  swords;  then*  houses  were  plun- 
dered and  half  destroyed.  An  information  was  laid 
against  Charles  Wesley  as  "  a  person  of  ill-fame,  a  vaga- 
bond, and  a  common  disturber  of  his  Majesty's  peace," 
with  a  prayer  that  he  might  be  transported.  A  similar 
information  was  lodged  against  all  the  Methodist  helpers 
at  that  moment  in  Ireland. 

When  the  case  came  before  the  court  the  judge  in- 
quired, "  Where  were  the  persons  presented  ? "  He 
glanced  at  Charles  Wesley,  with  the  company  of  his 
preachers  about  him,  as  they  came  forward,  and  seemed 
for  some  time  visibly  agitated,  and  unable  to  proceed. 
Here  was  a  group  of  strange  criminals !  The  first  witness 
for  the  prosecution  was  Butler,  who  being  asked  his  occu- 
pation answered  that  he  was  a  ballad-singer.  "Here," 
cried  the  judge,  lifting  up  his  hands  in  wonder,  "here 
are  six  gentlemen  indicted  as  vagabonds;  and  the  first 
accuser  is  a  vagabond  by  profession." 

Persecution,  however,  never  slew  even  a  bad  creed. 
It  was  not  in  the  least  likely  to  hinder  Methodism.  In 
Ireland  the  Methodist  preacners  had  many  strange  ex- 
periences ;  much  hardship ;  many  odd  conversions ;  many 
queer  followers ;  but  their  success  was  great.  Wesley  him- 
self, summing  up  the  fruits  of  his  work  in  Dublin,  says  :— 

"  In  some  respects  the  work  of  God  in  Dublin  was  more  remark- 
able than  even  in  London,  (i)  It  is  far  greater,  in  proportion  to 
the  time  and  to  the  number  of  people.  (2)  The  work  was  more 
pure.  In  all  this  time,  while  they  were  mildly  and  tenderly  treated, 
there  were  none  of  them  headstrong  or  unadvisable  ;  none  that  were 
wiser  than  their  teachers ;  none  who  dreamed  of  being  immortal 
or  infallible,  or  incapable  of  temptation ;  in  short,  no  whimsical  or 
enthusiastic  persons  ;  all  were  calm  and  sober-minded." l 

Wesley,  it  may  be  added,  adapted  his  methods  to  the 
conditions  of  Irish  society.  He  had  to  brace  the  morality 
of  his  converts  in  some  respects  by  the  sharpest  discip- 
line. He  relentlessly  expelled  from  his  societies  those 
who  assisted  to  plunder  the  cargo  of  a  wrecked  ship  until 

1  Journal,  July  26,  1762. 


256  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

they  made  restitution.  The  author  of  the  famous  saying 
that  "cleanliness  is  next  to  godliness"  naturally  looked 
with  unrelenting  eyes  on  the  easy-going,  unwashed  habits 
of  many  of  his  converts.  He  required  his  preachers,  in 
dress  and  habit,  to  be  a  rebuke  to  all  slovenliness.  Thus 
to  one  of  his  Irish  preachers  he  writes,  instructing  him, 
with  plain  -  spoken  directness,  "  to  avoid  all  laziness, 
sloth,  indolence " ;  all  "  nastiness,  dirt,  slovenliness,"  &c. 
"Whatever  clothes  you  wear,"  wrote  Wesley,  "let  them 
be  whole :  no  rents,  no  tatters,  no  rags."  He  even 
thought  necessary  to  add,  "  Clean  yourself  of  lice,"  "  Cure 
yourselves  and  your  family  of  the  itch." 

Many  converts  were  won  amongst  the  Irish  Roman 
Catholics,  and  amongst  them  one — Thomas  Walsh — who 
would  have  been  a  remarkable  man  in  any  age  and 
under  any  form  of  society. 

Southey  dwells  at  length  on  Walsh's  case,  drawn  visibly 
into  a  mood  of  admiring  sympathy  by  the  scholarship 
this  strange  convert  achieved.  Here  was  an  Irish 
peasant,  the  son  of  a  carpenter,  the  child  of  fanatical 
Romanists,  who  had  renounced  Romanism  as  the  result 
of  mere  intellectual  recoil  from  its  errors.  He  had  been 
brought  into  clear  and  happy  spiritual  life  while  hearing 
a  Methodist  preacher  at  a  street  corner  in  Limerick  ex- 
pounding Christ's  words,  "Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  that 
labour,"  &c.  This  man  made  himself,  in  Wesley's  words, 
"  the  best  Biblical  scholar  I  have  ever  known."  He  knew 
Hebrew  and  Greek  as  perfectly  as  he  knew  his  native  Erse. 
If  questioned  concerning  any  Hebrew  or  Greek  word  in  the 
Bible  he  would  tell  after  a  pause  how  often  and  where  it 
occurred,  and  what  it  meant  in  every  place. 

But  Walsh  was  something  more  than  an  amazing  scholar 
in  certain  lines.  He  had  a  genius  for  religion ;  and  his  life, 
to  quote  Southey,  "  might  well  convince  even  a  Catholic 
that  saints  are  to  be  found  in  other  communions  as  well 
as  in  the  Church  of  Rome."  Walsh  himself  describes 
what  may  be  called  the  mountain  heights  to  which  he 
was  lifted  as  the  result  of  his  conversion : — 

"  'Now,'  says  he,  'I  felt  of  a  truth  that  faith  is  the  substance 
or  subsistence  of  things  hoped  for  and  the  evidence  of  things  not 
seen.  God  and  the  things  of  the  invisible  world,  of  which  I  had 


HOW   THE   WORK   SPREAD  :   IRELAND  257 

only  heard  before  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear,  appeared  now  in  their 
true  light  as  substantial  realities.  Faith  gave  me  to  see  a  reconciled 
God  and  an  all-sufficient  Saviour.  The  Kingdom  of  God  was  within 
me.  I  drew  water  out  of  the  wells  of  salvation.  I  walked  and 
talked  with  God  all  the  day  long  :  whatsoever  I  believed  to  be  His 
will  I  did  with  my  whole  heart.  I  could  unfeignedly  love  them 
that  hated  me  and  pray  for  them  that  despitefully  used  and  perse- 
cuted me.  The  commandments  of  God  were  my  delight."  l 

Walsh  carried  his  piety  into  his  studies,  and  here  is 
the  prayer  with  which  he  was  accustomed  to  preface 
each  new  hour  of  study: — 

"  Lord  Jesus,  I  lay  my  soul  at  Thy  feet  to  be  taught  and  governed 
by  Thee.  Take  the  veil  from  the  mystery  and  show  me  the  truth  as 
it  is  in  Thyself.  Be  Thou  my  sun  and  star  by  day  and  by  night ! " 

His  religion  had  in  it  a  touch  of  something  unearthly. 
He  seemed  to  breathe  strange  airs.  His  feet  trod  the  eartn, 
but  his  spirit  was  in  the  celestial  realm.  Southey  says : — 

"His  friends  described  him  as  appearing  like  one  who  had 
returned  from  the  other  world,  and  perhaps  it  was  this  unearthly 
manner  which  induced  a  Romish  priest  to  assure  his  flock  that  the 
Walsh  who  had  turned  heretic  and  went  about  preaching  was  dead 
long  since ;  and  that  he  who  preached  under  that  name  was  the 
devil  in  his  shape.  It  is  said  that  he  walked  through  the  streets 
of  London  with  as  little  attention  to  all  things  around  him  as  if 
he  had  been  in  a  wilderness,  unobservant  of  whatever  would  have 
attracted  the  sight  of  others,  and  as  indifferent  to  all  sounds  of 
excitement,  uproar,  and  exultation  as  to  the  passing  wind.  He 
showed  the  same  insensibility  to  the  influence  of  fine  scenery  and 
sunshine  ;  the  only  natural  object  of  which  he  spoke  with  feeling 
was  the  starry  firmament — for  there  he  beheld  infinity.  .  .  . 

"  Sometimes  he  was  lost,  they  say,  in  glorious  absence,  on  his 
knees  with  his  face  heavenwards  and  arms  clasped  round  his 
breast,  in  such  composure  that  scarcely  could  he  be  perceived  to 
breathe.  His  soul  seemed  absorbed  in  God ;  and  from  the 
serenity,  and  '  something  resembling  splendour  which  appeared 
on  his  countenance  and  in  all  his  gestures  afterwards  it  might 
easily  be  discovered  what  he  had  been  about.'  Even  in  sleep  the 
devotional  habit  still  predominated,  and  'his  soul  went  out  in 
groans  and  sighs  and  tears  to  God.'  They  bear  witness  to  his 
rapts  and  ecstasies,  and  record  circumstances  which  they  them- 

1  Southey,  vol.  ii.'p.  119. 


258  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

selves  believed  to  be  proofs  of  his  communion  with  the  invisible 
world."1 

If  Walsh's  religion  had  in  it  an  ardour  which  rose  to 
the  level  of  passion,  it  was  yet  marked  by  a  fine  charity 
and  sanity.  This  is  how  he  discussed  the  Komish  Church 
he  had  left : — 

"I  bear  them  witness  that  they  have  a  zeal  for  God,  though 
not  according  unto  knowledge.  Many  of  them  love  justice,  mercy, 
and  truth  ;  and  may,  notwithstanding  many  errors  in  sentiment, 
and  therefore  in  practice  (since  as  is  God's  majesty  so  is  His 
mercy),  be  dealt  with  accordingly.  But  I  freely  profess  that  now, 
since  God  hath  enlightened  my  mind  and  given  me  to  see  the 
truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,  if  I  had  still  continued  a  member  of  the 
Church  of  Rome  I  could  not  have  been  saved.  With  regard  to 
others  I  say  nothing ;  I  know  that  every  man  must  bear  his  own 
burden  and  give  an  account  of  himself  to  God.  To  our  own 
Master  both  they  or  I  must  stand  or  fall  for  ever.  But  love,  how- 
ever, and  tender  compassion  for  their  souls  constrained  me  to  pour 
out  a  prayer  to  God  in  their  behalf.  All  souls  are  Thine,  O  Lord 
God;  and  Thou  wiliest  all  to  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
truth,  and  be  saved.  ...  I  beseech  Thee,  O  eternal  God,  show 
Thy  tender  mercies  upon  those  poor  souls  who  have  been  long 
deluded  by  the  god  of  this  world,  the  Pope  and  his  clergy.  Jesus, 
Thou  lover  of  souls  and  Friend  of  sinners,  send  to  them  Thy  light 
and  Thy  truth  that  they  may  lead  them."  2 

It  is  almost  amusing  to  put  side  by  side,  as  types  of 
the  wide  range  of  character  from  which  Wesley  drew 
his  helpers,  John  Nelson,  the  Yorkshire  stonemason, 
and  Thomas  Walsh,  the  Irish  carpenter's  son.  The  one 
was  a  typical  Saxon :  square-headed,  strong-bodied,  with 
little  imagination  but  with  much  humour ;  rich  in  the 
salt  of  common-sense,  and  with  a  command  of  homely 
Saxon  speech  which  suggests  John  Bunyan  or  William 
Cobbett.  Walsh  represents  the  Celtic  type,  with  its  gift 
of  imagination,  its  visions,  itsardours,  its  touch  of  melan- 
choly, its  kinship  to  the  spiritual  world.  Walsh  had 
neither  the  strength  of  body,  the  sanity  of  intellect,  nor 
the  plodding  common-sense  of  John  Nelson.  And  Nelson 
could  never  have  been  the  scholar,  the  dreamer,  the 
mystic,  such  as  Walsh  was.  He  never  rose  to  his  fervours, 

1  Southey,  vol.  ii.  p.  122.  2  Ibid.,  p.  116. 


HOW    THE   WORK    SPREAD  :    IRELAND  259 

nor  was  touched  by  his  melancholy.  But  both  men  were 
alike  in  the  courage,  the  fire,  the  zeal  with  which  they 
served  Methodism,  and  proclaimed  its  message  with  their 
dying  breath  to  crowds.  And  a  religious  movement 
which  created,  and  used  spiritual  types  so  diverse,  was 
surely  very  remarkable. 

Wesley  visited  Ireland  first  in  1 747,  and  betwixt  that 
period  and  his  death  he  crossed  the  Irish  Sea  no  less  than 
forty-two  times.  So  successful  was  his  work  on  Irish 
soil  that  in  1752  he  held  the  first  Irish  Conference.  It 
met  at  Limerick,  lasted  two  days,  the  members  consisting 
of  John  Wesley  himself  and  nine  of  his  helpers.  The 
first  Irish  Conference,  like  the  early  English  Conferences, 
spent  much  time  in  a  vigorous  examination  into  the 
theology  of  the  helpers  and  their  teaching ;  and  the  notes 
of  the  "  conversations "  are  sometimes  almost  humorous 
in  their  directness  and  pungency.  "  How  far  do  any  of 
us  believe  the  doctrine  of  Predestination?"  runs  one 
question.  The  answer  to  it  is,  "  None  of  us  believe  it  at 
all  ! "  Some  of  the  questions  and  answers  have  a  local 
flavour.  Irish  congregations  were  apt  to  be  talkative ;  so 
comes  the  question,  "  How  shall  we  all  set  an  example 
to  the  people  of  decency  in  public  worship?"  Answer: 
"  First,  let  us  constantly  kneel  at  prayer,  and  stand  during 
singing  and  while  the  text  is  repeated.  Second,  let  us  be 
serious  and  silent  both  while  the  service  lasts,  and  while 
we  are  coming  in  and  going  out." 

There  is  a  local  flavour,  again,  in  another  question  and 
answer.  "  Should  we  not  preach  more  expressly  and  more 
strongly  on  self-denial  than  we  have  hitherto  done  ? " 
Answer  :  "  By  all  means,  in  this  kingdom  more  especially, 
where  it  is  scarce  ever  mentioned  or  thought  of."  "  What 
should  we  avoid  next  to  luxury  ? "  Answer :  "  Idleness, 
or  it  will  destroy  the  whole  work  of  God  in  the  soul ;  and 
in  order  to  this  let  us  not  pass  one  day  without  spending 
at  least  one  hour  in  private  prayer." 

This  was  exactly  the  teaching,  pungent,  strong-fibred, 
practical,  which  Wesley's  emotional  converts  in  the  south 
of  Ireland,  at  least,  needed.  And  such  teaching,  linked 
to  evangelical  doctrine  of  the  most  fervent  type,  and 
preached  in  the  most  fervent  way,  yielded  in  Ireland 
very  remarkable  fruits. 


CHAPTER  XII 

ACROSS   THE    ATLANTIC 

WHO  wants  to  see  in  what  strange,  unguessed  ways — in 
advance  of  all  human  plans,  or  independently  of  them — a 
great  religious  movement  such  as  that  of  the  eighteenth 
century  spreads,  may  well  study  the  story  of  how  Wesley's 
work  spread  to  America.  The  forces  of  the  great  move- 
ment flew  across  the  wide  Atlantic  like  burning  sparks 
blown  with  the  wind — the  wind  that  bloweth  whitherso- 
ever it  listeth. 

No  human  field  could  well  be  less  promising — as  far  as 
spiritual  conditions  are  concerned — than  that  offered  by 
the  United  States  of  that  day.  It  had  the  roughness  of  a 
new  settlement,  with  the  forces  and  institutions  of  civilised 
life  only  half  developed.  A  scanty  population  was  scat- 
tered over  an  immense  geographical  area,  and  what  to-day 
are  counted  amongst  the  greatest  cities  of  the  world  were 
then  little  more  than  villages.  Philadelphia  in  1739,  for 
example,  when  Whitefield  arrived  there,  consisted  of  only 
2076  houses,  representing  a  population  of  ten  or  eleven 
thousand  persons.  Whitefield,  with  his  far-carrying  voice, 
could  have  made  himself  audible  to  the  entire  population 
at  once.  Social  life  was  in  its  crudest  form ;  industrial 
life  was  only  beginning  to  stir;  the  very  institutions  of 
religion,  over  large  areas,  had  yet  to  be  created.  Franklin 
tells  an  odd  story  belonging  to  an  older  period,  according 
to  which  some  one  was  pleading  with  the  Attorney-General 
of  the  day  for  a  charter  and  funds  to  establish  a  college 
in  Virginia,  and  he  begged  Mr.  Attorney  to  consider  that 
"  the  people  of  Virginia  had  souls  to  be  saved  as  well  as 
the  people  of  England."  "  Souls,"  cried  this  great  legal 
authority,  "  damn  your  souls !  Make  tobacco."  And  over 
wide  tracts  of  primitive  settlements  that  brusque  and 
pagan  counsel  had  been  acted  upon.  People  counted  the 
business  of  "  growing  tobacco  " — or  its  equivalents — much 


260 


ACROSS   THE    ATLANTIC  261 

more  urgent  and  important  than  that  of  "saving  their 
souls,"  if,  indeed,  they  had  any  souls  to  be  saved.  Already, 
too,  the  political  skies  above  the  United  States  were 
black  with  the  menace  of  the  coming  war  with  the  parent 
State,  a  war  which  was  to  rend  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  in 
twain  for  unknown  years. 

The  story  of  the  first  planting  of  Methodism  on 
American  soil  is  very  curious.  In  1752  Wesley  visited  an 
odd  patch  of  German  settlement  from  the  Palatinate  on 
the  Rhine,  in  Ireland — a  cluster  of  little  villages,  Ballin- 
garrene,  Killeheen  and  Courtmatrix.  His  visit  resulted 
m  many  conversions  and  the  creation  of  some  Methodist 
Societies.  Wesley  records  the  visit  without  comment  in  his 
Journal ;  it  was  part  of  the  day's  work.  And  yet  in  that 
little  community  of  German-Irish  he  had,  all  unknow- 
ing, planted  seed  out  of  which  was  to  spring  under  other 
skies  the  great  Methodist  Church  of  the  United  States. 

One  of  his  converts  was  Philip  Embury,  who  became  a 
lay  preacher;  a  man  without  any  special  endowment  of 
intellect,  yet  his  name — almost  by  chance — has  become 
historic.  Embury  was  one  of  a  group  of  Irish-German 
emigrants  to  the  United  States  in  1764.  He  settled  in 
New  York,  but  lacked  courage  to  begin  religious  work 
there,  and  by  a  natural  and  inevitable  reaction  his  own 
religious  life  began  to  die.  Another  party  of  these 
German-Irish  emigrants,  from  the  same  neighbourhood, 
landed  in  New  York  the  next  year.  Amongst  them  was 
Barbara  Heck,  a  peasant  woman  of  courageous  character 
and  an  earnest  Methodist.  Her  zeal  kindled  in  womanly 
vehemence  when  she  found  the  first  party  of  emigrants 
had  practically  forgotten  their  Methodism.  A  familiar 
but  doubtful  story  relates  how  she  went  into  a  room  one 
day  where  Embury  and  his  companions  were  playing  cards. 
She  seized  the  pack,  threw  it  into  the  fire,  and  cried  to 
Embury :  "  You  must  preach  to  us  or  we  shall  all  go  to 
hell  together;  and  God  will  require  our  blood  at  your 
hands."  "  I  cannot  preach,"  stammered  the  rebuked  man, 
"  for  I  have  neither  chapel  nor  congregation."  "  Preach 
in  your  own  house,"  answered  Barbara  Heck,  "  and  to  our 
own  company."  And  so  the  first  Methodist  sermon  in 
America  was  preached  under  a  private  roof  and  to  a  con- 
gregation of  five  persons. 


262  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

It  is  sometimes  said,  in  reference  to  this  incident,  by 
way  of  sneer,  that  American  Methodism  was  "  born  at  the 
card-table";  but  there  is  evidence  that  Embury  him- 
self had  not  lost  his  Methodist  habits  and  become  a  card- 
player. 

The  work  begun  in  this  fashion  spread ;  a  congregation 
was  formed,  a  Society  organised.  To  this  congregation 
there  came  one  Sunday  a  British  officer  in  full  uniform ; 
he  fell  on  his  knees  with  the  other  worshippers,  and 
joined  in  their  singing  when  they  rose.  It  was  Cap- 
tain Webb,  of  the  42nd,  a  gallant  soldier  who  had  been 
converted  while  listening  to  a  sermon  by  Wesley  at 
Bristol. 

Webb  was  a  soldier  of  distinction,  and  in  many  ways 
a  remarkable  man.  He  fought  at  the  siege  of  Louisburg 
and  was  desperately  wounded.  A  bullet  struck  him  on 
the  right  temple,  glanced  down  through  the  eye-ball 
and  fell  into  his  mouth,  and  in  the  shock  of  the  wound 
Webb  swallowed  the  bullet.  "  He  is  dead  enough,"  was 
the  comment  of  a  comrade,  as  he  stooped  over  him.  But 
Webb,  most  indomitable  of  men,  whispered  back,  "No, 
I  am  not  dead."  He  lived  to  take  a  great  part  in  a 
nobler  warfare.  He  was  with  the  tiny  and  heroic  column 
that,  at  midnight  on  September  12,  1759,  climbed  the 
crevice  in  the  cliffs  which  led  to  the  Heights  of  Abraham, 
and  in  the  fierce  fighting  next  morning  he  saw  Wolfe  die 
and  the  strength  of  France  in  Canada  shattered. 

He  was  stout-bodied  and  broad-faced,  and  the  green 
shade  that  hung  over  his  eyeless  socket  gave  to  his 
broad  features  a  peculiar  look.  He  was  in  the  habit  of 
taking  his  sword  into  the  pulpit  with  him  and,  before 
he  preached,  laying  it  on  the  table  or  desk.  It  was 
a  bit  of  gallant  steel,  and  with  the  battle-scarred  face 
of  the  preacher  above  it  never  failed  to  impress  an 
audience.  John  Thomas,  the  second  President  of  the 
United  States,  no  mean  judge  of  oratory,  described  Webb 
as  "the  old  soldier,  one  of  the  most  eloquent  men  I 
ever  heard."  Webb  carried  into  his  religion  all  the  fine 
qualities  of  a  soldier — courage,  loyalty,  enterprise.  He 
became  a  local  preacher,  and  was  accustomed  to  go  into 
the  pulpit  in  full  uniform.  He  was  quartered  with  a 
detachment  of  his  regiment  at  Albany,  and  hearing 


ACROSS   THE    ATLANTIC  263 

of  the  little  society  at  New  York,  came  down  the  river, 
made  himself  known,  and  at  once  put  the  impulse  of  a 
new  energy  into  Methodist  affairs. 

A  woman  leads  the  procession  of  converts  to  Christianity 
in  Europe,  the  purple  seller  of  Philippi;  and  a  woman's 
figure,  that  of  Barbara  Heck,  stands  at  the  head  of 
American  Methodism.  And  beside  her  are  the  figures  of 
two  laymen — Embury  the  carpenter,  and  Webb  the  soldier. 

The  first  Methodist  chapel  in  America  was  built, 
Embury  making  the  pulpit  with  his  own  hands,  and 
preaching  the  first  sermon  in  it,  on  October  30,  1768. 
It  was  a  low  building  of  stone,  60  feet  by  42  feet,  and 
was  adorned  with  a  fireplace  and  a  chimney.  This  was 
done  to  evade  the  law  which  forbade  the  erection  of 
other  than  Anglican  places  of  worship.  The  work  spread 
fast,  and  a  letter  was  written  to  Wesley  urging  him  to 
send  them  a  leader,  and  adding  that  if  the  English  Con- 
ference could  not  afford  to  pay  the  preacher's  passage 
the  members  of  the  little  Society  in  New  York  would 
sell  their  coats  and  shirts  to  provide  the  funds. 

Wesley,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  a  very  definite  and 
prudent  strategy  in  his  operations.  He  took  short  steps, 
and  never  went  far  from  his  base.  He  did  not  cross 
St.  George's  Channel  till  1747,  nor  the  Scotch  border  till 
1751.  To  reach  across  the  Atlantic  to  America  seemed,  to 
his  prudent  eyes,  a  policy,  if  not  too  daring,  yet  too  hurried. 
When  Wesley  was  urged,  a  little  later,  to  visit  America  him- 
self he  replied :  "  The  way  is  not  plain ;  I  have  no  business 
there  so  long  as  they  can  do  without  me.  At  present  I  am 
a  debtor  to  the  people  of  England  and  Ireland." 

But  the  cry  from  America  was  very  urgent.  One  per- 
tinacious Methodist  wrote : — 

"  Mr.  Wesley  says,  the  first  message  of  the  preachers  is  to  the 
lost  sheep  of  England.  And  are  there  none  in  America?  They 
have  strayed  from  England  into  the  wild  woods  here,  and  they 
are  running  wild  after  this  world.  They  are  drinking  their  wine 
in  bowls,  and  are  jumping  and  dancing,  and  serving  the  devil  in 
the  groves  and  under  the  green  trees.  And  are  not  these  lost 
sheep  ?  And  will  none  of  the  preachers  come  here  ?  Where  is 
Mr.  Brownfield?  Where  is  John  Pawson?  Where  is  Nicholas 
Manners?  Are  they  living,  and  will  they  not  come?"1 

1  Southey,  vol.  ii.  p.  202. 


264  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

It  was  impossible  to  refuse  that  appeal,  and  the  Con- 
ference of  1769  called  for  volunteers  for  America.  Two 
helpers,  Richard  Boardman  and  Joseph  Pilmoor,  offered 
themselves.  They  were  not  sent  across  the  Atlantic 
with  empty  hands.  The  members  of  the  Conference, 
the  hardest  worked  and  worst  paid  company  of  men 
probably  at  that  moment  in  Great  Britain,  put  their 
scanty  coins  together.  It  took  £20  to  pay  the  passages 
of  the  volunteers  across  the  Atlantic,  and  they  carried  in 
addition  the  sum  of  .£50  as  a  token  of  brotherly  love  from 
British  to  American  Methodism.  These  two  Methodist 
helpers  thus  set  out  with  £50  to  Christianise  a  continent ! 

The  Conference  of  1771  made  a  still  more  splendid 
contribution  to  the  religious  life  of  the  United  States. 
It  sent  Francis  Asbury  and  Richard  Wright  to  America ; 
and  Francis  Asbury  was  certainly  the  noblest  gift 
England  ever  bestowed  on  her  cnildren  beyond  the 
Atlantic.  He  has  never  yet  come  to  his  just  fame,  even 
in  hs  own  Church.  It  was  in  the  year  Whitefield  died 
that  Asbury  landed  on  American  soil,  and  while  this,  as 
yet  unknown,  Staffordshire  peasant  had  none  of  White- 
field's  magnificent  powers  of  oratory,  he  was  destined  to 
make  a  deeper  and  more  enduring  mark  on  the  religious 
life  of  America  than  even  the  great  preacher  did. 

This  son  of  a  peasant-household  began  to  preach  when 
a  lad  of  seventeen.  He  went  to  America  when  he  had 
been  only  four  years  a  helper,  and  was,  in  modern  terms, 
a  probationer.  He  started  on  that  historic  pilgrimage, 
which  was  to  lead  him  to  goals  unimagined,  without  a 
penny  in  his  pocket.  On  the  rough,  vast  floor  of  America 
he  played  the  part  of  an  apostle,  without  putting  on  the 
airs  of  one ;  without,  indeed,  in  the  least  suspecting  him- 
self to  be  one.  His  travels  rival,  if  they  do  not  outrun, 
those  of  John  Wesley  himself,  and  they  were  maintained 
under  far  harsher  conditions.  He  found  his  lodgings 
in  the  rough  cabins  of  the  pioneers ;  his  track  ran  through 
shadowy  and  almost  untrodden  forests,  over  wide  prairies, 
across  unbridged  rivers.  His  salary  for  the  greater  part 
of  his  life  was  under  £20  a  year.  Tall  and  thin,  his 

gaunt  body  had  the  toughness  of  steel,  while  his  temper 
ad  the  gentleness  of  a  woman. 
He  was  a  Fletcher  without  that  awful  look  of  other 


ACROSS    THE    ATLANTIC  265 

worlds  which  lay  like  a  continual  presence  on  Fletcher's 
brow ;  a  Wesley  without  the  masterful  will  and  the 
obstinate  High  Church  bias  of  his  great  leader.  But 
Wesley  himself  could  not  have  outridden,  or  outpreached, 
or  out-toiled  him ;  Fletcher's  saintly  life  had  hardly  more 
of  the  atmosphere  of  prayer  about  it  than  that  of  Asbury. 
Prayer  was  woven  into  the  very  fibres  of  his  life.  He 
touched  with  its  magic  every  person  with  whom  he  came 
in  contact,  if  only  for  a  moment.  If  he  stayed  a  few 
days  hi  some  settler's  cabin  he  had  household  prayer 
with  every  household  meal.  No  visitor  crossed  the 
cabin  threshold  without  being  welcomed,  or  dismissed, 
with  prayer.  Asbury  had  not  Wesley's  genius  for 
command,  but  he  suited  the  American  character  and 
the  conditions  of  American  life  better  than  even  his 
great  leader.  He  had  no  class  prepossessions.  He 
belonged  to  no  political  school.  He  had  no  stubborn 
High  Church  bias.  And  he  held  together,  as  perhaps 
not  even  Wesley  could  have  done,  the  Methodist  Societies 
in  America  during  the  bloody  civil  war,  and  he  held 
them  by  force  of  the  wise  gentleness  that  love  teaches. 

For  his  only  genius  was  that  which  love  gives.  In  this 
respect  he  resembled  Fletcher  rather  than  Wesley.  He 
was,  in  fact,  an  English  and  peasant  version  of  that  half- 
angelic  Swiss.  Asbury  was  half  seraph  and  half  peasant 
— a  seraph  with  a  touch  of  the  peasant's  homeliness 
added,  and  hardly  less  seraphic  on  that  account. 

Wesley,  brief  as  was  his  personal  intercourse  with 
Asbury,  had  put  upon  him  his  characteristic  stamp.  It 
is  still  visible  in  his  pithy,  short-sentenced  English.  It 
was  writ  large  before  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries  in 
his  neatness  of  dress,  his  methodical  industry,  his  hunger 
for  knowledge,  and  his  student-like  habits.  This  Staf- 
fordshire peasant,  travelling  five  thousand  miles  a  year, 
preaching  incessantly,  spending  three  hours  a  day  in 
prayer,  and  without  a  settled  home,  yet  had  it  as  a  fixed 
rule  to  read  a  hundred  pages  daily.  He  made  himself 
a  scholar,  and  mastered  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew. 

To  what  mysterious  order  did  such  men  belong  ?  They 
seem  to  have  possessed  faculties  which  lie  undeveloped 
in  ordinary  men,  and  to  draw  their  life  from  richer 
fountains.  What  to  other  men  are  rare  and  momentary 


266  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

experiences — high  moods  of  emotion  and  of  vision,  which 
come  and  vanish  at  a  breath — were  to  such  men  as 
Wesley  and  Fletcher  and  Asbury  the  permanent  and 
ordinary  conditions  of  life.  They  are  revelations,  indeed, 
of  the  unused  and  unsuspected  forces  which  slumber  in 
religion. 

It  is  needless  to  assess  Asbury's  intellect.  Love  taught 
him  wisdom,  love  gave  him  power.  He  reached  by  its 
charm  heights  of  influence  impossible  to  mere  intellec- 
tual energy.  He  healed  the  schism  of  1779-80  betwixt 
the  Nortnern  and  Southern  branches  of  the  infant 
Methodist  Church  in  America,  not  by  his  arguments, 
not  by  mere  tact  or  authority,  but  oy  his  tears  and 
prayers,  and  by  that  love  which  shone  in  his  tears  and 
breathed  in  his  prayers.  A  wifeless,  solitary  man ;  a 
rustic  by  birth,  who  owed  nothing  to  the  schools  and 
little  to  natural  endowment;  who  had  no  powers  of  de- 
bate, and  seemed  to  have  no  gifts  of  leadership ;  yet,  in 
the  history  of  His  Church,  as  God  sees  it,  and  writes  it, 
and  will  crown  it,  not  many  figures  stand  higher  than 
that  of  the  peasant  bishop  of  Methodism  in  the  United 
States — Francis  Asbury. 

Wesley,  shrewd  judge  of  men  as  he  was,  scarcely 
realised  at  first  Asbury's  pre-eminent  gifts.  He  had 
recognised,  it  is  true,  the  gentleness  which  was  the  char- 
acteristic note  of  Asbury's  character,  but  had  hardly 
discovered  the  strength  and  sagacity  which  underlay 
Asbury's  gentleness.  And  Wesley  had  a  general's  in- 
stinct. He  believed  that  in  the  shaping  of  a  new 
Church  on  the  rough  soil  of  America  a  strong  hand  was 
needed;  and  in  1773  he  despatched  Thomas  Rankin  and 
George  Shadford  as  reinforcements  to  America.  His 
letter  of  commission  to  Shadford  is  characteristic.  "  I 
let  you  loose,  George,  on  the  great  continent  of  America. 
Publish  your  message  in  the  open  face  of  the  sun,  and 
do  all  the  good  you  can." 

Rankin,  who  figures  familiarly  as  "dear  Tommy"  in 
Wesley's  letters,  was  a  Scotchman  by  birth,  a  soldier  by 
training — a  soldier  of  John  Haime's  school — and  Wesley 
made  him  general  assistant  of  the  Societies  in  America 
for  the  express  purpose  of  drawing  more  tightly  the  reins 
of  discipline  there.  Rankin  certainly  brought  to  his 


ACROSS   THE   ATLANTIC  267 

religion  something  of  the  temper,  and  very  much  of  the 
discipline,  of  a  soldier.  Even  the  gentle  Asbury,  where 
principle  was  concerned,  was  known  to  have  a  hand  of 
iron ;  but  Rankin's  touch  was  of  wrought  steel !  His 
sense  of  order  was  so  profoundly  shocked  by  the  physical 
manifestations  which  attended  some  revivals  that  he  was 
tempted  to  quarrel  with  the  revivals  themselves.  He 
carried  the  peremptory  accents  of  a  trooper  into  the 
Society  gatherings,  and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the 
gentler-natured  Asbury,  with  the  finer  and  wiser  influ- 
ences he  represented,  would  be  driven  from  the  field. 
jEsop's  fable  of  the  contest  betwixt  the  sun  and  the  wind 
was  illustrated  afresh,  in  a  word,  by  the  contrast  betwixt 
the  methods  of  the  two  men;  and,  as  in  the  historic 
fable,  the  gentle  sunshine  of  Asbury's  genius  proved 
more  effective  than  the  hard  and  blustering  wind  which 
Rankin's  administration  suggested. 

Methodism,  from  the  first,  grew  with  almost  tropical 
rapidity  on  American  soil.  It  suited  the  genius  of  the 
people.  It  exactly  fitted  their  circumstances.  An  itin- 
erant ministry,  as  mobile  and  as  enterprising  as  the 
light  cavalry  of  an  invading  army,  spread  over  the  whole 
vast  continent.  The  first  preachers  brought  the  methods 
of  Wesley,  and  the  traditions  of  the  earliest  heroic  group 
of  his  helpers,  to  America.  They  outmarched  the  immi- 
grants ;  they  out-toiled  the  settlers ;  they  carried  the 
message  and  the  spirit  of  religion  everywhere.  And  year 
by  year  the  tale  ot  new  Societies,  of  multiplying  chapels, 
and  of  an  ever-expanding  army  of  helpers,  was  reported 
to  the  British  Conference. 

Asbury  greatly  contributed  to  this  by  the  skill  of  his 
administration.  He  had  many  of  the  gifts  of  a  great 
commander.  He  knew  how  to  choose  men ;  he  could 
look  over  a  whole  continent  and  see  its  strategic  points, 
and  place  everywhere  exactly  the  man  that  suited  the 
post.  He  knew,  too,  how  to  suit  the  temper  and  genius 
of  a  preacher  to  the  exact  spiritual  stages  of  each  Society ; 
and  with  all  his  gentleness  Asbury  had  enough  resolution 
to  act  on  his  own  reading  of  the  situation.  He  distri- 
buted his  helpers  over  the  continent  on  the  method,  and 
with  much  of  the  skill,  by  which  a  great  general  distri- 
butes his  troops. 


268  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

And  yet  Methodism  in  America  was  at  first  sadly 
handicapped.  Civil  war  was  on  the  point  of  breaking 
out.  The  first  Conference  in  America  met  while  the 
guns  at  Lexington  were  still  sending  their  sullen  vibra- 
tions across  the  world.  The  historic  meeting  of  Coke 
and  Asburp  in  America,  on  August  13,  1776,  marks  the 
starting  point  of  the  great  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 
of  the  United  States.  But,  only  three  weeks  before,  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  had  been  signed,  and  the 
bond  which  united  the  colonies  to  England  was  severed. 
To  found  a  new  Church  on  a  soil  shaken  with  a  political 
earthquake  of  this  scale  was  a  task  which  might  well 
seem  too  great  for  the  wit  of  man  to  accomplish.  But 
something  wiser  than  human  wit,  and  mightier  than 
human  strength,  went  to  the  task. 

The  helpers  Wesley  had  sent  across  the  Atlantic  were, 
of  course,  English  or  Scotch  by  birth ;  their  sympathies 
were  with  their  native  land ;  they  shared  Wesley's  obsti- 
nate loyalty;  and  they  were,  not  unnaturally,  suspected 
of  being  "unpatriotic,"  not  to  say  anti  -  American,  by 
their  own  flocks.  Wesley,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  was  declaring  at  that  very  moment  that  he 
would  as  soon  associate  with  a  drunkard  or  a  whore- 
monger as  with  rebels.  With  what  eyes  could  Rankin, 
the  ex-cavalryman,  with  more  than  a  soldier's  instinct 
for  discipline  and  a  soldier's  hate  of  disloyalty,  look  on 
rebels  ?  One  by  one  Wesley's  early  helpers  were  driven 
out  of  America.  The  preachers  were,  later,  required  by 
Congress  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  new 
Government,  and  even  the  all-patient  Asbury  refused 
to  do  this.  He  was  fined  £$  for  preaching  without 
taking  the  oath,  and  was  practically  silenced  for  two 
years,  and  in  hiding  for  part  of  the  time.  The  unhappy 
effects  of  the  civil  war  are  reflected  in  the  Minutes  of 
the  English  Conference.  For  ten  years — ten  sad,  troubled 
years — 1773-1783 — there  is  no  record  of  the  American 
work  in  them.  It  had  disappeared !  The  red  furnace 
of  war  seemed  to  have  destroyed  it.  For  eleven  years 
— 1773-1784  —  no  published  Minutes  of  the  American 
Conference  made  their  appearance. 

Wesley,  it  may  be  added,  greatly  increased  the  diffi- 
culties of  his  helpers  in  America  by  his  political  utter- 


ACROSS   THE    ATLANTIC  269 

ances  in  England.  In  1775  he  issued  a  little  pamphlet  of 
four  pages,  entitled  "  A  Calm  Address  to  our  American 
Colonies."  Never  before  or  since,  perhaps,  did  so  small 
a  bit  of  printed  paper  produce  such  a  sensation.  Over 
40,000  copies  were  sold  in  a  few  weeks.  The  pamphlet 
moved  the  almost  tearful  gratitude  of  the  members  of 
the  British  Cabinet,  astonished  to  find  a  man  of  Wesley's 
knowledge  of  the  common  people,  and  influence  with 
them,  on  their  side ;  but  it  deeply  offended  all  who  were 
opposed  to  the  war,  and  brought  on  Wesley  himself  a 
tempest  of  abuse.  His  friends  in  America  tried  to  sup- 
press the  pamphlet  there,  and  burned  all  the  copies  that 
reached  American  soil.  Wesley  bluntly  declared  in  his 
pamphlet  that  the  Americans  had  no  grievances,  and  had 
been  robbed  of  no  rights.  The  British  Parliament,  he 
argued,  had  power  to  tax  the  American  settlements,  and 
the  revolt  was  at  bottom  not  a  struggle  for  freedom,  but 
an  attempt  to  overthrow  the  monarchy. 

Now  the  "  Calm  Address  "  was,  in  fact,  simply  Johnson's 
well-known  pamphlet  "Taxation  no  Tyranny"  abridged, 
and  adorned  with  Wesley's  name  and  a  few  sentences  of 
Wesley's  nervous  English.  Its  publication,  in  this  form, 
laid  Wesley,  not  unreasonably,  open  to  the  charge  of 
plagiarism.  The  pamphlet,  too.  was  in  sharp  contrast 
with  some  of  Wesley's  earlier  utterances.  He  had,  for 
example,  on  June  15,  1755,  addressed  a  very  noble  letter 
to  Lord  North,  protesting  against  the  treatment  to  which 
the  Americans  were  subjected.  He  wrote: — 

"All  my  prejudices  are  against  the  Americans;  for  I  am  a 
High  Churchman,  the  son  of  a  High  Churchman,  bred  up,  from 
my  childhood,  in  the  highest  notions  of  passive  obedience  and 
non-resistance  ;  and  yet,  in  spite  of  all  my  long-rooted  prejudices, 
I  cannot  avoid  thinking,  if  I  think  at  all,  that  an  oppressed 
people  asked  for  nothing  more  than  their  legal  rights,  and  that 
in  the  most  modest  and  inoffensive  manner  that  the  nature  of  the 
thing  would  allow.  But  waiving  all  considerations  of  right  and 
wrong,  I  ask,  is  it  common-sense  to  use  force  towards  the  Ameri- 
cans ?  These  men  will  not  be  frightened  ;  and,  it  seems,  they  will 
not  be  conquered  so  easily  as  was  at  first  imagined.  They  will 
probably  dispute  every  inch  of  ground ;  and,  if  they  die,  die  sword 
in  hand."  l 

1  Tyerman,  vol.  i.  p.  198. 


270  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

These  are  admirable  sentiments;  but  while  Wesley 
wrote  in  this  fashion  in  private,  how  did  he  come  to  write 
so  differently  in  public  ?  The  truth  is  that  in  politics 
Wesley  was  apt  to  speak  on  half  knowledge,  since  he  was 
too  busily  occupied  in  a  greater  realm  to  be  able  to  master 
all  the  facts  belonging  to  a  world  so  different.  In  political 
matters,  too,  his  natural  bias,  both  of  training  and  char- 
acter, made  him  what  was  called  in  those  days  a  Tory. 
Only  when  his  conscience  became  peremptory  did  his 
political  views  correct  themselves. 

It  can  be  easily  understood  how  Wesley's  utterances 
in  England  increased  the  difficulties  of  his  preachers  in 
America.  But  Wesley,  it  must  be  said,  was  far  wiser  for 
his  preachers  than  for  himself.  Thus  he  wrote  to  them  : 

"  It  is  your  part  to  be  peacemakers  ;  to  be  loving  and  tender  to 
all,  but  to  addict  yourselves  to  no  party.  In  spite  of  all  solicita- 
tions, of  rough  or  smooth  words,  say  not  one  word  against  one  or 
the  other  side  ;  keep  yourselves  pure  ;  do  all  you  can  to  help  and 
soften  all ;  but  '  beware  ,how  you  adopt  another's  jar.' "  In  the 
same  spirit  Charles  Wesley  wrote  to  them,  saying,  "As  to  the 
public  affairs,  I  wish  you  to  be  like-minded  with  me.  I  am  of 
neither  side,  and  yet  of  both  :  on  the  one  side  of  New  England, 
and  of  Old."1 

The  ecclesiastical  situation  in  America  quickly  came 
to  a  crisis — a  crisis  which  hastened  the  solution  of  the 
same  difficulty  in  England  itself.  Wesley  required  his 
helpers  in  America,  as  in  England,  not  only  to  keep  on 
terms  of  friendship  with  the  Church  of  England,  but 
to  regard  themselves  as  her  humble  and  unrecognised 
servants.  They  were  not  to  administer  the  sacraments, 
to  hold  services  in  church  hours,  or  to  label  themselves 
Dissenters.  But  the  number  of  clergymen  in  the  United 
States  was  few;  their  parishes  were  vast,  and  they  were 
too  often  men  without  either  zeal  or  piety.  It  was  absurd 
to  expect  the  energetic  and  fast-multiplying  Societies  of 
Methodism  to  depend  on  the  charity — too  often  the 
grudging  and  ungenerous  charity — of  a  few  Anglican  clergy 
for  the  administration  of  the  sacraments. 

The  civil  war,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  wrecked  Wesley's 

1  Southey,  vol.  ii.  p.  210. 


ACROSS   THE    ATLANTIC  271 

whole  policy  in  this  matter.  Most  of  the  Anglican  clergy- 
men abandoned  their  parishes  and  fled  from  the  revolting 
colonies.  The  administration  of  the  sacraments,  as  far  as 
Wesley's  Societies  were  concerned,  threatened  to  become 
— over  wide  spaces  it  did  actually  become — a  lost  and 
almost  forgotten  thing. 

The  question  of  the  sacraments  thus  became,  in  America, 
urgent  and  peremptory.  Wesley  appealed  to  the  English 
bishops  to  ordain  some  of  his  helpers  to  meet  the  crisis, 
and  was  refused.  English  bishops  had  no  over-tender 
anxiety  to  supply  the  ordinances  of  religion  to  rebels  at 
war  with  their  mother  country  and  their  legitimate 
sovereign.  Wesley  wrote  to  the  Bishop  of  London :  "  I 
mourn  for  poor  America,  for  the  sheep  scattered  up  and 
down  therein;  part  of  them  have  no  shepherds  at  all, 
particularly  in  the  northern  colonies ;  and  the  case  of  the 
rest  is  little  better,  for  their  own  shepherds  pity  them  not." 

Wesley,  with  characteristic  patience,  waited  for  four 
years  before  he  acted.  He  wrote  twice  to  Lowth,  the 
Bishop  of  London,  a  man  of  liberal  mind  and  generous 
sympathies,  begging  ordination  for  a  single  preacher 
who  might  travel  amongst  the  American  Societies  and 
administer  the  sacraments.  But  Lowth  refused.  "  There 
are  three  ministers  in  that  country  already,"  he  said. 
"And  what  are  these,"  was  Wesley's  natural  reply,  "to 
watch  over  a  continent  ? "  Not  only  were  they  too  few 
in  number;  they  were  visibly  unfit  in  character  for  the 
work  they  had  to  do.  Wesley  wrote  to  Lowth : — 

"Your  lordship  did  not  see  good  to  ordain  him  [Wesley's 
helper],  but  your  lordship  did  see  good  to  ordain  and  send  into 
America  other  persons  who  knew  something  of  Greek  and  Latin, 
but  who  knew  no  more  of  saving  souls  than  of  catching  whales." 

Facts  with  Wesley  had  always  a  final  logic.  He,  by 
this  time,  had  begun  to  look  at  the  whole  situation  with 
eyes  purged  of  High  Church  prepossessions.  It  was  as 
well,  perhaps,  he  reflected  that  the  bishops  had  not 
ordained  his  helpers. 

"  If  they  would  ordain  them  now  (he  wrote)  they  would  expect 
to  govern  them ;  and  how  grievously  would  this  entangle  us ! 
As  our  American  brethren  are  now  totally  disentangled,  both  from 


272  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

the  State  and  the  English  hierarchy,  we  dare  not  entangle  them 
again  either  with  the  one  or  the  other.  They  are  now  at  full 
liberty  simply  to  follow  the  Scriptures  and  the  primitive  Church; 
and  we  judge  it  best  that  they  should  stand  fast  in  that  liberty 
wherewith  God  has  so  strangely  made  them  free." l 

He  determined  to  solve  the  difficulty  by  ordaining  a 
superintendent  or  bishop  for  America.  Wesley  acted  de- 
liberately, and  puts  with  great  force  the  reasons  that 
weighed  with  him.  Why  did  he  do  for  America  what 
he  refused  to  do  for  England  ?  He  replies  : — 

"Here  there  are  bishops  who  have  a  legal  jurisdiction.  In 
America  there  are  none,  either  any  parish  ministers ;  so  that,  for 
some  hundreds  of  miles  together,  there  is  none  either  to  baptize  or 
to  administer  the  Lord's  Supper.  Here,  therefore,  my  scruples  are 
at  an  end ;  and  I  conceive  myself  at  full  liberty,  as  I  violate  no 
order,  and  invade  no  man's  right,  by  appointing  and  sending 
labourers  into  the  harvest."  l 

Accordingly  Wesley,  with  Creighton,  a  clergyman  who 
was  also  one  of  his  devoted  helpers,  ordained  Coke  as 
superintendent,  Richard  Whatcoat  and  Thomas  Vasey 
as  presbyters  for  America.  Coke  in  turn  was  to  ordain 
Asbury.  Wesley,  after  his  practical  fashion,  would  go  as 
far  as  he  must,  but  no  further.  His  principles,  it  is  true, 
ran  far  ahead  of  his  acts ;  but  he  was  the  unimaginative 
Englishman  who  kept  his  feet  on  the  solid  earth  and 
cared  much  for  the  concrete  and  nothing  for  the  abstract ; 
much  for  practical  efficiency  and  little  for  logic.  Alike 
in  England  and  America,  he  strained  to  the  breaking- 
point  the  loyalty  of  his  people  in  his  desire  to  keep 
on  terms  with  the  Anglican  Church.  In  America,  for 
example,  in  1 779,  the  Methodist  Churches  in  the  Southern 
States  deliberately  broke  loose,  and  resolved  to  begin  ex- 
istence as  an  independent  Church,  since  in  no  other  way 
could  they  secure  the  administration  of  the  sacraments 
amongst  themselves.  The  schism  was  only  healed  by 
Asbury's  prayers  and  tears  and  matchless  tact. 

Wesley's  characteristic  tenderness  for  the  High  Church 
theory  his  intelligence  had  long  ago  renounced,  and  which 
he  was  in  the  very  act  of  publicly  repudiating,  is  amus- 

1  Southey,  vol.  ii.  p.  213. 


ACROSS   THE    ATLANTIC  273 

ingly  shown  in  the  very  ordination  of  Coke.  He  will  not 
name  him  "  bishop,"  though  he  is  making  him  one,  but 
labels  him  "  superintendent."  It  was  American  directness 
and  common -sense  which  later  thrust  aside  the  clumsy 
word  "  superintendent,"  and  made  the  name  and  the  fact 
to  agree  by  the  use  of  the  term  bishop.  Wesley,  too,  at 
another  point  was  illogical.  Lord  King,  he  declared,  had 
satisfied  him  that  presbyters  and  bishops  were  the  same 
order.  Why,  then,  did  he  think  it  necessary  to  ordain 
Coke  as  bishop  under  the  alias  of  "  superintendent "  ? 
Southey's  criticism  at  this  point  is  perfectly  sound.  On 
Wesley's  principles  the  consecration  was  useless,  for  Dr. 
Coke,  having  been  regularly  ordained,  was  already  as 
good  a  bishop  as  Wesley  himself. 

Coke  was  almost  as  splendid  a  gift  to  America  as 
Asbury.  His  tact,  his  zeal,  his  overpowering  personality, 
at  once  made  him  a  power;  and  it  may  be  added  that 
a  gentleman  by  birth  and  position,  and  a  scholar  by 
training,  he  had  a  social  position  to  which  Wesley's  other 
helpers  could  not  pretend.  Asbury  was  on  a  country 
tour  at  the  moment  of  Coke's  arrival ;  but  just  as  Coke 
had  finished  preaching  at  a  chapel  in  Delaware  "  a  plain, 
robust  man  came  up  to  him  in  the  pulpit  and  kissed  him, 
pronouncing  at  the  same  time  a  primitive  salutation." 
This  was  Asbury ;  and  the  two  men  who  were  to  impress 
so  profoundly  the  religious  life  of  the  United  States  at 
once  became  the  closest  friends. 

It  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this  book  to  further 
describe  the  progress  of  the  work  in  America.  Methodism 
there  was  but  an  offshoot  of  the  English  revival  planted 
on  strange  soil,  under  strange  skies,  and  under  harsh  con- 
ditions. Yet  it  has  grown  to  be  the  greatest  and  most 
vigorous  branch  of  English-speaking  Protestantism  history 
knows  !  Its  geographical  and  political  conditions  gave  it 
the  form  of  an  independent  Church  earlier  than  even  the 
parent  movement  in  England ;  and  it  is  to-day  the  most 
powerful  religious  body  in  a  nation  of  eighty  millions.  If 
Wesley's  work  had  to  be  judged  by  this,  in  a  sense,  one  of 
its  secondary  results,  how  great  is  its  scale ! 


CHAPTER   XIII 

THE    SECRET    OF   THE    GREAT    REVIVAL 

UP  to  this  point  the  range  and  scale  of  the  revival 
have  been  described ;  but  it  is  worth  while  to  ask  at  this 
stage  what  is  the  explanation  of  a  movement  which  so 
profoundly  affected  the  whole  nation ;  and  where  the 
secret  of  its  strange  energy  is  to  be  sought. 

The  secret,  of  course,  belongs  to  the  spiritual  realm. 
It  is  idle  to  seek  for  it  in  the  personal  qualities  of  the 
men  who  were  its  agents,  in  the  overwhelming  oratory 
of  Whitefield,  the  hymns  of  Charles  Wesley,  the  ordered 
and  matchless  industry,  the  genius  for  organisation,  of 
John  Wesley.  Nor  does  the  explanation  lie  in  the  realm 
of  doctrine.  England  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  not 
revolutionised  by  the  discovery  of  a  new  theology,  nor 
yet  by  the  force  of  an  old  theology  set  in  a  new  perspec- 
tive and  proclaimed  in  new  accents.  The  revival  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  it  is  customary  to  say,  is  the  supreme 
historical  re-birth  of  evangelicalism  amongst  the  English- 
speaking  race.  And  that  is  true  ;  but  it  is  not  the  whole 
truth.  The  most  evangelical  reading  of  theology  is,  in 
itself,  a  powerless  thing.  It  will  not  save  an  individual, 
much  less  influence  a  nation. 

In  its  last  analysis  the  secret  of  the  great  religious 
movement  here  described  is  to  be  found  in  a  rich  out- 
pouring of  the  living  Spirit  of  God  on  the  nation ;  and  in 
the  circumstance  that  at  this  particular  moment  that 
Divine  Spirit  found,  in  a  particular  group  of  men,  fit 
instruments,  with  fit  measure  of  devotion  and  faith,  for 
a  work  so  great.  Flowing  through  the  channel  of  true 
doctrine,  and  using  the  agency  of  fit  human  instru- 
ments, the  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit  wrought  this  great 
work. 

But  the  question  still  remains,  what  was  that  particular 
reading  of  Christianity  which  the  revival  represents,  and 


274 


THE  SECRET  OF  THE  GREAT  REVIVAL    275 

which  serves  to  explain  its  scale  and  its  enduring  energy  ? 
What  are  evangelical  doctrines  ? 

The  Christian  religion,  as  all  history  shows,  lies  open, 
perpetually,  to  danger  from  two  opposite  extremes.  One 
extreme  resolves  it  into  a  pale  and  attenuated  Deism,  a 
theory  which  exhausts  all  the  great  words  of  Christianity 
of  their  meaning,  and  all  the  great  offices  of  Christ  of 
their  reality.  It  ignores — it  treats  as  non-existent  or  as 
insignificant — that  dread  and  measureless  interval,  a 
moral  gulf,  which  no  wit  or  toil  of  man  can  bridge,  be- 
twixt sin  and  righteousness.  Sin,  on  this  reading,  is 
merely  a  stage  in  human  development.  It  has  no  endur- 
ing element  of  guilt,  and  is  pursued  by  no  eternal  penalties. 
Forgiveness,  if  any  forgiveness  indeed  is  necessary,  comes 
through  no  awful  mystery  of  suffering  running  up  to  the 
very  person  and  throne  of  God.  It  is  a  cheap  and  easy 
thing,  the  mere  gift  of  God's  good  nature.  Conversion  is 
a  phrase.  Christ's  priesthood  is,  if  not  an  impertinence, 
at  least  an  irrelevance ;  for  man  needs  no  priest.  A 
divine  redemption  accomplished  through  sacrifice  is  un- 
intelligible. Christ  has  no  redeeming  offices.  He  is 
simply  a  -teacher,  a  little  wiser  than,  say,  Epictetus  or 
Marcus  Aurelius ;  or  even  perhaps  not  quite  so  wise ! 
Religion  is  a  little  scheme  of  moral  reform,  accomplished 
easily  by  the  unaided  energy  of  the  human  will. 

This  theory  evaporates  the  Bible  into  a  mist ;  it  drains 
its  supreme  passages  of  all  meaning.  It  is  a  creed  which 
inspires  no  martyrs,  creates  no  saints,  sends  out  no 
missionaries,  writes  no  hymns,  and  has  little  use  for 

J  raver.  Jesus  Christ,  in  its  scale  of  values,  is  merely  a 
ewish  Confucius.  The  denied,  or  the  forgotten,  offices  of 
Jesus  Christ — of  Christ  the  seeker,  of  Christ  the  redeemer 
— are  the  reproach  of  this  theory  of  religion  and  the 
secret  of  its  weakness.  And,  as  we  have  seen,  this  was 
the  version  of  Christianity  which,  at  the  moment  when 
the  great  revival  began,  had  captured  all  the  pulpits,  and 
nearly  all  the  rnind,  of  England. 

The  opposite  misreading  of  Christianity  is  the  sacer- 
dotal version  in  all  its  moods  and  forms.  It  does  not 
deny  Christ's  priesthood,  but  betwixt  the  personal  human 
soul  and  the  great  High  Priest  of  the  human  race  it  puts 
the  barrier  of  a  human  priesthood.  Redemption,  in  this 


276  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

reading  of  the  Christian  system,  is  robbed  of  its  freeness, 
of  its  simplicity,  of  its  amazing  grace.  Religion  becomes 
a  scheme  of  measured  and  mechanical  duties;  of  pious 
efforts  regulated  by  a  clock,  and  undertaken  in  a  temper 
of  bondage.  The  sacerdotalist,  when  analysed,  is  a  man 
who  has  never  heard  the  great  message  of  Christianity 
to  each  accepted  and  forgiven  soul — "Thou  art  no  more 
a  servant  but  a  son."  On  the  sacerdotal  theory,  divine 
grace  flows  exclusively  through  the  "  lean  and  scrannel 
pipe " — to  borrow  a  Miltonic  phrase — of  a  particular 
line  of  ordained  men.  This  is  a  theology  which  suits 
the  austere  and  select  few,  but  has  no  message  for  the 
common  crowd.  It  inspires  great  earnestness,  but  kindles 
no  sunshine.  It  sometimes  evolves  martyrs,  but  it  never 
makes  a  rejoicing  saint. 

These  opposite  misreadings  of  Christianity  stand  in 
sombre  contrast  with  that  great  system  of  evangelical 
belief  which  comes  betwixt  them  both,  and  avoids  the 
falsehood  of  each.  What  are  evangelical  doctrines  ?  A 
chain  of  mountain  peaks,  that  pierce  to  the  crown  of  the 
heavens,  and  on  whose  summits  brood  perpetual  sunshine ! 
They  constitute  a  close-knitted  succession  of  truths  that 
break  out  of  eternity  and  have  its  scale.  Truths  that 
relate  to  sin,  and  proclaim  its  measureless  guilt,  its 
hurrying  and  inevitable  doom ;  but  which  also  reveal 
an  immediate  and  personal  deliverance  from  sin — a  de- 
liverance which  comes  as  an  act  of  divine  grace,  and  on 
the  simplest  terms  of  penitential  acceptance.  But  it  is 
no  light  and  easy  deliverance  which  costs  the  Deliverer 
nothing.  It  is  the  supreme  miracle  of  the  spiritual 
universe ;  made  possible  only  by  the  mystery  of  Christ's 
redemption.  It  is  brought  near  by  the  mystery  of  the 
Holy  Spirit's  grace.  It  sets  the  forgiven  soul  in  personal 
and  rejoicing  relationship  with  a  reconciled  and  loving 
Father. 

A  divine  redemption ;  a  realised  pardon ;  a  restored 
relationship  to  God  through  faith ;  the  entrance  of  super- 
natural forces  into  the  life  by  the  grace  of  the  Divine 
Spirit ;  the  present  and  perfect  attainment  of  God's  ideal 
in  the  character.  And  all  this  made  intelligible  and 
credible  by  the  redeeming  work  and  offices  of  Jesus 
Christ — and  by  the  saving  energies  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in 


THE  SECRET   OF   THE   GREAT   REVIVAL         277 


the  human  soul  !  This  is  the  ^Tangolioal  —  version  of 
Christianity  ! 

There  is  nothing  new  in  these  doctrines.  They  re- 
present no  theological  discoveries.  But  they  are  the 
effective  doctrines  of  Christianity.  They  differentiate 
it  from  a  mere  scheme  of  morals.  They  make  it  some- 
thing more  than  a  theology.  They  directly  bear  on 
character.  All  the  dynamic  energies  of  Christianity  find 
their  spring  in  them.  These  are  the  doctrines  that  send 
out  missionaries,  that  inspire  martyrs,  that  regenerate 
slums  !  They  awaken  deeper  vibrations  in  the  human 
soul  than  all  other  truths  put  together.  They  are  the 
doctrines  in  which  dying  men  find  comfort.  All  the 
great  hymns  of  Christian  worship  reflect  them  ;  all  the 
great  prayers  of  human  need  give  them  speech.  They 
formed  exactly  the  message  which  the  dying  Christianity 
of  the  England  of  that  day  needed.  "  Men,"  the  message 
ran,  "  are  in  utmost  and  instant  peril  ;  they  need,  not 
some  new  and  heavier  chain  of  duty,  but  a  divine  de- 
liverance accomplished  through  redeeming  grace.  And 
this  salvation  is  possible.  A  Saviour  walks  amongst  men, 
touching  them  with  hands  of  tenderness.  Hope  is  born  ! 
All  men  may  be  saved  here  and  now." 

No  other  preachers  painted  sin  with  colours  so  dark, 
and  yet  so  true  to  human  consciousness,  as  did  the  men 
who  carried  this  message.  None  depicted  God's  love  in 
Christ  in  such  radiant  sunshine,  or  proclaimed  Christ  as  a 
Saviour  in  tones  so  confident.  These  doctrines,  too,  were 
preached  by  men  who  had  verified  them.  They  had 
brought  them  to  that  ultimate  test  of  all  religious  theories, 
the  forum  of  conscious  experience.  They  were  not  advo- 
cates, they  were  witnesses.  Every  syllable  on  their  lips 
rang  with  those  accents  of  reality  which  no  art  can  feign. 
They  challenged  their  hearers  to  an  immediate  and  per- 
sonal verification  of  the  truths  they  proclaimed. 

And  in  the  speech  of  these  men  thrilled  that  strange 
power  which  uses  human  logic  and  emotion  as  its  instru- 
ments, but  which  is  something  different  from  them  all  and 
greater  than  them  all  —  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  ;  the 
"  power  "  that  first  made  human  speech  its  vehicle  at 
Pentecost,  and  has  never  been  lacking  since  in  those  who 
have  learned  the  secret  of  Pentecost. 


278  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  such  a  gospel — preached  by 
such  men,  in  such  a  spirit,  and  at  such  a  critical  moment 
— accomplished  what  is  nothing  less  than  a  moral  revo- 
lution ?  It  permanently  changed  the  very  currents  of 
religious  history. 

But  it  may  be  asked,  Did  not  Wesley  preach  at  least 
some  strange  and  startling  doctrines  of  which  sober 
Christianity  knows  nothing,  or  at  least  knows  only  doubt- 
fully ?  The  whole  question  of  the  theology  of  the  revival 
is  discussed  later,  but  it  may  be  asked  here,  What  were 
those  two  great  doctrines  of  "  assurance "  and  of  "  per- 
fection "  with  which  the  names  of  the  Wesleys  and  of 
Whitefield  are  associated,  and  which  in  the  judgment  of 
multitudes  still  discredit  their  work  and  blot  their  fame  ? 

That  these  doctrines  are  still  suspected  only  proves 
how  imperfectly  the  Christian  religion,  after  nineteen 
centuries  of  Christian  history,  is  understood  even  in 
Christian  lands.  The  doctrine  of  perfection,  as  Wesley 
taught  it,  is  only  the  belief  that  God's  ideals  in  redemption 
for  the  human  soul  are  capable  of  being  realised,  and 
realised  here  and  now.  It  is  the  doctrine  that  the  highest 
possibility  of  religion  is  not  struggle  merely,  but  victory ; 
that  what  God  demands,  man,  with  the  help  of  God's 
grace,  may  give.  The  first  and  great  commandment,  that 
sums  up  in  its  brief  syllables  all  human  duty,  is — "  Thou 
shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  soul, 
and  mind,  and  strength."  Is  that  to  be  for  ever,  and  for 
the  souls  which  Christ  has  redeemed,  and  in  which  the 
Holy  Spirit  dwells,  a  law  unfulfilled ;  a  challenge  to  the 
human  conscience  unanswered ;  its  pain  and  condem- 
nation ?  To  assert  this  is  to  say  that  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, when  translated  into  the  terms  of  human  life  and 
experience,  is  a  failure.  It  is  to  say  that  God's  ideal  and 
man's  character  must  be  for  ever  in  discord.  This  surely 
is  a  theology  of  despair ;  a  doctrine  which  is  but  a  dis- 
guised atheism. 

There  were,  no  doubt,  many  strange  and  wild  mis- 
readings  of  the  doctrine  of  perfection  in  Wesley's  time ; 
but  as  he  held  it,  and  taught  it,  it  is  a  very  sane  and 
Scriptural  bit  of  theology,  and  its  rejection  is  the  denial, 
not  only  of  man's  hope,  but  of  God's  grace. 

What,  again,  was  that  doctrine  of  "  assurance "  which 


THE    SECRET   OF   THE   GREAT   REVIVAL         279 

to  the  wondering  ears  of  multitudes  in  that  day,  seemed 
a  new  and  wild  heresy ;  and  which  is  still  a  thing  suspect 
— or  at  least  uncomprehended — by  multitudes  in  the 
Christian  churches  to-day?  On  Wesley's  lips,  it  was,  of 
course,  only  a  reassertion  of  one  of  the  forgotten  offices 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  was  one  of  the  essential  gifts  of 
the  Christian  religion  drawn  into  the  sunlight  from  the 
realm  ot  musty  and  ancient  forgetfulness.  Pardon,  he 
taught,  was  to  find  its  verification  and  seal  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  pardoned  soul.  God's  forgiveness  was 
not  to  lie  always  in  the  realm  of  doubt,  a  dark  and  per- 
plexed uncertainty;  at  best  only  a  trembling  hope;  for 
most  men,  indeed,  a  fear-haunted  problem  whicn  only 
death  could  solve.  "The  Spirit  itself,"  ran  the  message 
of  the  great  revival,  "  bears  witness  with  our  spirits 
that  we  are  the  children  of  God."  Why  should  that 
which  was  the  gladness  of  the  Christian  consciousness 
in  the  first  century,  be  the  despair  of  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness in  the  eighteenth  century? 

And  the  doctrine  of  assurance,  as  Wesley  taught  it, 
was  an  appeal  to  the  human  consciousness.  Forgiveness, 
he  insisted,  wrought  in  the  human  soul  a  divine  peace 
which  was  its  witness  and  seal.  Alas!  that  this  great 
doctrine  to-day,  as  in  all  days,  finds  a  reflex  so  faint  in 
the  personal  experience  of  multitudes  who  are  yet  trying 
to  follow  Christ.  By  so  much  has  human  narrowness 
denied  to  God's  grace  some  of  its  sweetest  offices ! 

It  is  worth  noting  how  steadfastly,  from  the  moment 
of  his  conversion  to  his  dying  breath,  Wesley  kept  his 
own  experience  and  teaching  within  the  shining  curves 
of  evangelical  belief.  In  them  he  himself,  a  wearied 
sacerdotalist,  found  deliverance.  He  tells  the  tale  of 
the  long  despair  which  had  lain  like  a  blight  on  his 
life ;  of  the  spiritual  weariness  of  those  thirteen  sad 
years  betwixt  nis  entrance  into  the  ministry  and  his 
conversion.  He  was  convinced,  he  writes  in  1738,  that 
the  cause  of  his  spiritual  disquiet  was  unbelief,  and  that 
"  the  gaming  of  a  true  faith  was  the  one  thing  for  him." 
He  had  faith,  indeed,  of  a  sort,  but,  he  says,  "  I  fixed 
not  this  faith  on  its  right  object.  I  mean  only  faith  in 
God,  not  faith  hi  or  through  Christ."  Those  words 
touch  the  very  kernel  of  this  evangelical  theory ! 


280  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

Wesley,  as  we  have  seen,  found  deliverance  when  he 
came  into  personal  touch  with  Christ  as  a  personal 
Saviour.  Justifying,  saving  faith  in  the  light  of  that 
great  experience  he  defines  as  "  a  full  reliance  on  the 
blood  of  Christ  as  shed  for  me;  a  trust  in  Him  as  my 
Saviour,  as  my  sole  justification,  sanctification,  and  re- 
demption." The  saving  emphasis  lies  on  the  pronouns ! 
Then  Wesley  tasted  the  gladness  of  that  blessed  experi- 
ence he  calls  "assurance."  "An  assurance  was  given 
me  that  He  had  taken  away  my  sins,  even  mine,  and 
delivered  me  from  the  law  of  sin  and  death." 

Wesley  for  the  rest  of  his  days,  we  repeat,  kept  on  the 
high  lands  of  evangelical  belief  and  experience.  He 
found  in  evangelical  doctrines  the  keynote  of  all  his 
sermons.  The  text  of  his  first  open-air  sermon  was  the 
passage,  "  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because  He 
hath  anointed  me  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  poor." 
More  than  fifty  years  afterwards  he  preached  at  Leather- 
head  his  last  discourse  from  the  text,  "  Seek  ye  the  Lord 
while  He  may  be  found ;  call  ye  upon  Him  while  He  is 
near."  The  text  on  which  he  preached  most  frequently 
is  that  passage  which  declares  how  God  in  Christ  is 
"  made  unto  us  wisdom,  righteousness,  sanctification,  and 
redemption."  Almost  his  last  whispered  sentences  as 
he  lay  dying  consisted  of  the  words,  "There  is  no  way 
into  the  holiest  but  by  the  blood  of  Jesus."  Who  masters 
the  meaning  of  these  words  will  understand  Avhat  is  that 
evangelical  doctrine  which  was  the  special  message  of 
Wesley  to  his  generation,  and  is  indeed  the  great  pro- 
clamation of  Christianity  to  all  generations. 

Wesley  himself  is  almost  more  remarkable  as  a  witness 
to  these  truths  than  as  a  worker  or  leader.  Paley  has 
built  on  the  conversion  of  Paul  an  almost  matchless 
demonstration  of  the  truth  of  Christianity  itself.  The 
moral  transformation,  sudden  and  permanent,  of  a  strong, 
proud,  passionate  nature  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
facts  in  human  history.  To  transform  a  zealot,  at  a 
breath,  into  a  saint,  a  persecutor  of  Christianity  into  a 
martyr  for  the  truths  of  Christianity — this  is  a  miracle ! 
An  event  so  amazing  must  have  behind  it  a  cause  not 
less  wonderful.  And  this  is  the  problem  in  Wesley's 
history. 


THE    SECRET    OF   THE    GREAT    REVIVAL          281 

What  explains  the  difference  in  the  two  stages  of  his 
own  experience — the  doubt -tormented  sacerdotalist  of 
early  years,  and  the  radiant  saint  of  later  years  ?  Up  to 
May  24,  1738,  Wesley  wore  his  religion  as  a  monk  of 
the  thirteenth  century  might  have  worn  his  hair-cloth 
shirt.  It  was  a  task,  an  anguish,  a  burden.  But  on 
that  date  he  suddenly  stepped  into  a  realm  of  certainty, 
of  freedom,  of  gladness. 

That  great  hour  at  the  humble  meeting  in  Alders- 
gate  Street  was  certainly  the  turning  point  in  Wesley's 
career.  It  marks  the  dividing  line  of  his  life.  On  one 
side  are  struggle,  doubt,  toil,  failure.  On  the  other  side 
are  certainty,  gladness,  power,  achievement.  Something 
happened  in  that  supreme  moment  which  explains  the 
change.  It  was  Wesley's  conversion.  He  received  the 
living  Christ  by  personal  faith  as  a  living  and  personal 
Saviour;  and  the  sublime  ideals  of  redemption,  as  they 
exist  in  the  mind  and  purpose  of  God,  were  fulfilled  in 
him. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  this  was  a  purely  subjective 
experience ;  valid,  perhaps,  for  its  subject,  but  of  authority 
for  nobody  else.  What  conclusion,  having  authority  for 
mankind  at  large,  can  be  drawn  from  the  subjective  ex- 
perience of  a  solitary  human  soul  ?  Nor,  perhaps,  does  it 
strengthen  the  case  to  argue  that  Wesley's  experiences 
were  repeated  in  thousands  of  other  souls.  Multiply  a 
cipher  no  matter  how  often,  it  remains  a  cipher. 

But  the  change  in  Wesley  was  not  merely  subjective. 
It  took  concrete  form  in  his  life.  It  registered  itself 
in  history.  It  has  the  scale  and  permanency  of  history. 
How  was  it  that  he,  who  in  1727  could  not  move  a 
village,  after  1739  could  shake  three  kingdoms?  How 
did  it  come  to  pass  that  the  teacher  who  was  driven 
out  of  a  little  colony  as  a  mere  human  irritant  became 
the  teacher,  the  comforter,  the  trusted  leader  of  whole 
generations  ? 

The  explanation  certainly  does  not  lie  in  any  personal 
gifts  of  body  or  brain  Wesley  possessed.  These  were 
exactly  the  same  at  both  stages  of  his  career.  Wesley 
at  Wroote  was  twenty-five  years  of  age.  He  had  then 
the  scholar's  brain,  the  zealot's  fire,  the  orator's  tongue; 
and  he  failed — failed  consciously  and  completely.  "  I 


282  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

preached  much,"  is  his  own  record,  "but  saw  no  fruits 
of  my  labour."  Wesley,  again,  in  Charleston,  was  thirty- 
two  years  of  age.  At  no  stage  of  his  life  did  he  show  a 
higher  passion  of  zeal,  or  more  methodical  and  resolute  in- 
dustry ;  a  self-sacrifice  so  nearly  heroic  in  temper.  And 
yet  he  failed ! 

But  something  came  into  his  life  by  the  gate  of  his 
conversion,  something  he  never  lost,  something  which 
transfigured  his  career.  It  was  a  strange  gift  of  power — 
power  that  used  Wesley's  natural  gifts — his  tough  body, 
his  keen  intellect,  his  resolute  will — as  instruments,  but 
which  was  more  than  these.  Who  looks  on  Wesley's  life 
as  a  whole,  and  sees  on  one  side  of  a  particular  date 
doubt,  weakness,  and  defeat ;  and  on  the  other  side  cer- 
tainty, gladness,  and  matchless  power,  cannot  doubt  that 
the  secret  of  Wesley's  career  lies  in  the  spiritual  realm. 
Wesley's  story  is  simply  one  embodied,  historic,  and  over- 
whelming demonstration  of  the  truth  of  what  is  called 
the  Evangelical  reading  of  Christianity. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

HOW  WESLEY  AFFECTED  ENGLAND 

IT  seems  a  daring  and  extravagant  thing  to  measure  the 
work  of  a  single  life  by  the  changes  that  life  has  wrought 
in  the  character  of  a  nation.  The  most  commanding 
human  figure,  when  set  against  the  background  of  a 
kingdom,  may  well  seem  dwarfed  into  microscopic 
dimensions.  In  some  rare  cases,  as  with  Peter  the  Great 
in  Russia,  Cavour  in  Italy,  or  Bismarck  in  Germany,  a 
test  so  high  may  be  applied  without  any  startling  sense 
of  disproportion.  But  in  English  history,  such  a  test,  when 
applied  even  to  Pitt  or  to  Gladstone,  seems  too  cruel. 

In  the  case  of  Wesley,  many  of  the  ordinary  elements 
of  power  were  visibly  lacking.  He  was  to  the  day  of  his 
death  a  poor  man,  if  only  because  he  gave  away  everything 
he  possessed.  He  was,  at  the  moment  when  his  career 
takes  the  scale  of  history,  a  clergyman  without  a  charge, 
a  leader  without  a  party,  a  preacher  with  every  pulpit  in 
the  three  kingdoms  shut  against  him.  Yet  when  all  this 
has  been  said,  it  remains  true  that  Wesley  may  challenge 
the  judgment  of  mankind  by  the  test  of  the  mark  his 
work  has  left  on  the  history  of  the  English-speaking  race. 

And  his  contribution  to  that  history  may  be  compressed 
into  a  single  sentence.  He  restored  Christianity  to  its 
place  as  a  living  force  in  the  personal  creed  of  men  and 
in  the  life  of  the  nation.  A  change  profound  and  wonder- 
ful, carrying  in  itself  the  pledge  and  the  secret  of  a  thou- 
sand other  changes!  For  more  than  fifty  years — from 
the  moment  he  broke  through  all  ecclesiastical  conventions 
and  preached  on  the  open  moors  at  Kingswood  to  the 
rough  miners,  down  to  the  moment  speech  failed  on 
his  lips  in  the  death-chamber  in  City  Road — Wesley  was 
the  greatest  personal  force  in  England.  And  he  was  a 
force  for  all  that  Christianity  means. 

He  had  a  spiritual  vision  as  keen  as  that  of  Thomas 


284  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

a  Kempis;  a  sense  of  eternity  as  profound  as  that  of 
William  Law ;  spiritual  convictions  as  overmastering  as 
those  of  John  Henry  Newman,  and  in  infinitely  closer 
harmony  with  the  essential  genius  of  Christianity.  And 
he  was  not,  like  the  author  of  the  Imitatio,  imprisoned 
in  a  cell.  He  was  not,  like  Law,  wrapped  in  cotton  wool 
by  a  cluster  of  rich  feminine  admirers.  He  was  not, 
like  Newman,  buried  in  semi-monastic  seclusion  at 
Littlernore.  He  lived  in  the  open  air.  He  turned  the 
hill-side  and  the  city  street  into  a  pulpit.  He  preached 
to  vast  crowds  daily;  he  touched  thousands  of  lives  by 
his  personal  influence ;  and  he  did  this  for  more  than 
fifty  years !  He  gathered  round  himself  a  great  order 
of  preachers  of  a  quite  new  type.  He  built  up  a  far- 
stretching  spiritual  organisation  embodying  his  own  ideals, 
and  on  fire  with  his  own  spirit.  As  a  result  he  quickened 
the  conscience,  not  merely  of  his  own  followers,  but  of 
the  Church  which  had  cast  him  out,  and  of  the  whole 
nation  to  which  he  belonged.  Christianity,  not  merely 
as  a  creed,  but  as  a  conscience,  was  in  this  way  re-born 
under  British  skies. 

The  range  and  character  of  Wesley's  work  may  be 
judged  by  the  tests  of  history.  And  when  those  high 
tests  are  applied  it  can  be  soberly  claimed  for  Wesley 
that  he  did  not  so  much  revive  the  evangelical  tradition 
of  Christianity ;  he  created  it !  He  made  it  a  permanent 
element  in  the  religious  life  of  England.  All  great  evan- 
gelistic movements,  from  his  time  down  to  the  present 
day,  have  had  in  them  a  breath  of  Wesley's  spirit.  And 
the  evangelical  tradition  which  dates  from  Wesley,  it 
may  be  added,  is  of  the  sanest  and  most  practical  type. 

There  is  a  current  platitude  just  now  that  the  next 
revival  must  be  ethical.  If  so,  it  will  be  a  return  to 
Wesley ;  for  the  revival  which  bears  his  name  was  ethical 
in  the  most  intense  and  practical  fashion.  Religion,  as 
Wesley  defined  it,  and  enforced  it,  consisted  of  godly 
tempers  and  godly  conduct.  Even  Leslie  Stephen,  who, 
in  trie  matter  of  theological  belief,  is  parted  by  whole 
horizons  from  Wesley,  and  who  tries  Wesley's  work  by 
purely  literary  tests,  bears  emphatic  testimony  to  the 
practical  qualities  of  that  work.  Wesley's  aim,  he  says, 
was  "to  stamp  out  vice,  to  suppress  drinking  and  de- 


HOW   WESLEY    AFFECTED   ENGLAND  285 

bauchery,  to  show  men  the  plain  path  to  heaven."  It 
was,  in  other  words,  to  set  up  in  human  life  that  Givitas 
Dei  of  which  all  the  saints  have  dreamed,  a  true  and 
imperishable  Kingdom  of  God,  a  kingdom  of  righteous- 
ness, peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Lecky,  in  a  score  of  passages,  notes,  with  a  certain 
accent  of  admiring  astonishment,  the  influence  of  the 
Methodist  revival  outside  Methodism.  It  was  one  of 
the  forces  which  produced  Sunday-schools.  It  affected 
the  army,  the  Universities,  literature,  and  this  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  chief  literary  men  of  the  day  had 
nothing  for  it  but  sneers.  It  is  not  easy  to  recite  the 
countless  practical  forms  which  Wesley's  work  took.  He 
set  up  a  dispensary  with  free  supply  of  medicine  to  the 
poor ;  he  fought  against  political  corruption ;  he  estab- 
lished relief  employment  for  the  destitute.  Says  Lecky, 
"It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  Wesley  had  a  wider 
constructive  influence  in  the  sphere  of  practical  religion 
than  any  other  man  who  has  appeared  since  the  sixteenth 
century." 

All  the  great  and  characteristic  contributions  to  Chris- 
tian life  in  modern  days  come,  in  brief,  by  direct  descent 
from  Wesley.  And  the  indirect  influence  of  his  work — 
its  reflex  on  other  bodies  than  his  own  —  is,  perhaps, 
greater  and  more  wonderful  than  even  its  direct  fruits. 
The  Anglican  Church,  for  example,  cast  Wesley  out.  It 
rejected  his  work.  Yet  the  Anglican  Church  of  to-day 
is  profoundly  influenced  by  Wesley.  He  created  a  new 
conscience  in  that  Church.  He  awakened  a  spirit  which 
killed  silently  and  absolutely,  as  a  breath  of  pure  oxygen 
kills  some  microbes,  the  idle  and  unspiritual  clergy  of  his 
day,  who  had  attenuated  Christianity  into  a  sort  of  Chinese 
morality — mere  Confucianism  with  a  Christian  label — and 
who  were  more  alarmed  at  the  suspicion  of  believing  too 
much  than  of  believing  nothing  at  all.  Wesley,  preaching 
on  his  father's  tombstone  outside  Epworth  Church,  made 
impossible  the  drunken  vicar  inside.  The  spectacle  of 
the  vast  open-air  crowds  that  hung  on  Wesley's  lips  made 
the  empty  churches  for  ever  intolerable. 

Wesley's  influence  outside  his  own  Church  runs  some- 
times in  strange  and  unrecognised  channels.  It  called 
into  existence,  no  doubt,  the  great  evangelical  school  in 


286  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

the  Anglican  Church.  But  it  also  helped  to  create  the 
opposite  school.  The  Oxford  Movement,  if  only  because 
it  was  served  by  more  splendid  literary  talents,  outbulks 
in  scale  and  importance  for  a  considerable  section  of  man- 
kind Wesley's  revival.  No  one  as  yet  has  adequately 
traced  the  connection  betwixt  the  two  movements;  and 
yet  the  connection  is  undeniable,  and  constitutes  a  striking, 
if  almost  unrecognised,  example  of  the  reflex  influence  of 
the  great  revival.  Wesley,  in  a  sense,  explains  Newman 
and  made  him  possible. 

There  are  the  oddest  resemblances  and  contrasts  be- 
twixt the  two  men.  Newman  was  born  ten  years  after 
Wesley  died,  and  so  drew  his  earliest  breath  in  the  new 
religious  atmosphere  Wesley  created.  Newman,  indeed, 
frankly  acknowledges  his  debt  to  the  revival.  "The 
writer,"  he  says,  "  who  made  a  deeper  impression  on  my 
mind  than  any  other,  and  to  whom,  humanly  speaking, 
I  almost  owe  my  soul,  is  Thomas  Scott."  But  Scott  was 
the  disciple  of  Newton,  and  Newton  was  converted  under 
Whitefield,  and  the  line  of  spiritual  connection  betwixt 
Newman  and  the  revival  at  this  point  is  clear.  Unlike 
Wesley,  Newman  was  an  evangelical  first,  and  a  sacer- 
dotalist  afterwards.  He  came  under  Law's  influence  as 
a  mere  boy ;  he  was  "  converted  "  in  an  evangelical  sense 
at  fifteen,  and  of  that  inward  conversion  he  says  in  his 
Apologia,  nearly  sixty  years  afterwards  :  "  I  am  still  more 
certain  than  that  I  have  hands  and  feet." 

But  though  the  order  of  events  is  inverted  in  the 
lives  of  the  two  men,  the  correspondences  are  wonderful. 
Newman,  it  is  true,  was  an  evangelical,  not  of  Wesley's, 
but  of  Whitefield's  school.  He  was  a  Calvinistic  evan- 
gelical, that  is ;  and  when,  like  Wesley,  he  made  the 
discovery,  in  his  own  words,  that  "Calvinism  is  not  a 
key  to  the  phenomena  of  human  nature  as  they  occur 
in  the  world,"  he  gave  up,  not  merely  Calvinism,  but 
the  whole  evangelical  theory  as  well.  Newman  was, 
perhaps,  more  credulous  than  even  Wesley.  Wesley 
believed  in  "Old  Jeffrey";  but  Newman,  as  a  youth, 
thought  he  himself  was  an  angel  and  the  solid  earth 
about  him  a  dream.  "I  thought,"  he  records  in  his 
Apologia,  "life  might  be  a  dream  or  I  an  angel,  and 
all  this  world  a  deception,  my  fellow  angels  by  a  playful 


HOW    WESLEY   AFFECTED  ENGLAND  287 

device  concealing  themselves  from  me,  and  deceiving  me 
with  the  semblance  of  a  material  world."  Nature  was  a 
parable  for  him,  Scripture  an  allegory. 

The  two  men  both  held  Fellowships  at  Oxford ;  both 
were  familiar  figures  in  the  historic  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's, 
and  both  went,  though  in  an  inverted  order,  through 
the  same  theological  stages.  Both  men  were,  in  turn, 
mystics,  ascetics,  sacerdotalists. 

But  where  Wesley  met  Peter  Bohler  and  stepped 
through  the  shining  gate  of  faith  into  the  land  of 
spiritual  freedom,  Newman  met  Pusey  and  went  through 
tne  narrow  doors  of  sacerdotalism  into  the  shadow- 
haunted  realm  of  a  false  theology.  Wesley  was  thirty- 
two  years  old  when  he  sailed  for  America,  and  before 
Moravian  influences  had  touched  him.  Newman  was 
thirty-two  years  old  when  he  parted  from  Froude  at  Rome 
on  his  way  to  Sicily,  and  when  on  the  narrow  Sicilian 
waters  he  wrote  his  hymn — "Lead,  Kindly  Light."  If 
the  two  men  had  met,  how  exactly  they  would  have 
understood  each  other !  And  with  what  equal  eyes  of 
approval  Archbishop  Laud  would  have  looked  on  them 
both  !  They  were  both  his  ecclesiastical  offspring. 

Wesley  would  have  fought  for  the  apostolic  succession 
and  for  the  integrity  of  the  Prayer-book  as  fiercely  as 
Keble  or  Newman.  He  would  have  thrust  all  dissenters 
out  of  both  the  realm  of  his  own  charity  and  the  King- 
dom of  God  with  a  scorn  as  complete  as  theirs.  With 
his  Oxford  companions  he  might  have  set  up,  instead 
of  the  Holy  Club,  a  semi-monastic  house  at  Littlemore, 
exactly  as  Newman  did  a  century  later.  Sacerdotalist, 
mystic,  and  ascetic,  we  repeat,  can  be  found  in  each  of 
them. 

But  Newman  is  an  arrested  Wesley.  Could  Wesley, 
like  Newman,  have  forsaken  Anglicanism  for  the  Church 
of  Rome?  His  habit  of  unsparing  logic,  his  courage  in 
hanging  life,  death,  and  eternity  on  a  syllogism,  makes 
that  possible.  The  sacerdotalist,  indeed,  who  does  not 
end  by  becoming  a  Roman  Catholic  is  an  example  of 
arrested  logic,  a  mere  incomplete  syllogism  in  flesh  and 
blood.  Newman's  argument  is  flawless :  "  To  believe  in 
the  Church" — in  the  sacerdotal  sense — "is  to  believe  in 
the  Pope."  Wesley,  in  1745,  would,  no  doubt,  have  found 


288  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

it  harder  to  join  the  Church  of  Rome  than  Newman  did  in 
1845.  Romanism  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was,  for  an  Englishman,  linked  to  a  hated  system 
of  politics.  It  stood  for  Charles  I.  against  Hampden ;  for 
the  Stuarts  against  the  House  of  Hanover ;  for  the  Star 
Chamber  against  the  Bill  of  Rights ;  for  James  II.  against 
William  of  Orange.  And  these  things  counted  even  for  a 
sacerdotalist.  Had  Newman  himself  lived  a  hundred 
3^ears  nearer  the  trial  of  the  Seven  Bishops  it  would  have 
made  his  surrender  to  the  Papacy  more  difficult. 

The  difference  in  their  religion  finds  its  expression  in 
the  different  atmosphere  of  the  two  men.  Wesley's  at- 
mosphere is  radiant  with  sunshine;  Newman's  is  a  sort 
of  sunless  mist.  Let  any  one  compare  the  over-subtle  logic, 
the  indefinable  note  of  weariness  which  runs  through 
Newman's  "  Grammar  of  Assent,"  and  the  exultant  energy, 
the  gladness,  the  accent  of  triumphant  certainty  in,  say, 
Wesley's  "  Appeals  to  Men  of  Reason  and  Religion,"  and 
he  will  find  expressed  in  literary  terms  the  spiritual  inter- 
val betwixt  the  two  men.  Newman  never  escaped  from 
that  sacerdotal  treadmill  in  which  Wesley  toiled  for 
thirteen  years.  He  only  changed  its  direction.  Religion, 
Newman  says  in  his  "  Grammar  of  Assent,"  is  "  a  system ; 
it  is  a  rite,  a  creed,  a  philosophy,  a  rule  of  duty."  But  he 
did  not  add  with  Wesley,  It  is  a  life ;  nay,  it  is  a  partner- 
ship in  the  highest  form  and  energy  of  Life,  the  life  of 
God  Himself !  Religion  for  Newman,  whether  at  Christ- 
church  or  at  Littlemore,  was  a  matter  of  "  prescribed  rites 
embodied  in  institutions."  For  Wesley,  it  was  the  inrush 
of  supernatural  forces  out  of  the  spiritual  realm,  flooding 
every  channel  of  human  nature. 

But  it  is  curious  to  note  how  profoundly  Newman  and 
Wesley  agreed  as  to  the  validity  of  the  spiritual  con- 
sciousness. Wesley,  from  first  to  last,  tested  religion  in 
the  forum  of  his  consciousness.  Newman,  following  Kant, 
rested  his  belief  in  God  on  the  witness  of  his  own  con- 
sciousness. We  have,  he  asserted,  "  a  direct  and  conscious 
knowledge  of  our  Maker."  He  found  in  the  indestructible 
facts  of  consciousness  the  one  force  capable  of  resisting 
the  all-dissolving  scepticism  of  the  intellect  in  the  realm 
of  religion.  "  Personality,"  in  Newman's  philosophy,  was 
"  the  key  to  truth."  Dr.  Barry,  his  best  biographer,  says : 


HOW   WESLEY   AFFECTED   ENGLAND  289 

"  Metaphysicians  commonly  started  from  the  universal 
to  arrive  at  the  particular;  but  he  who  is  not  of  their 
sect  reverses  the  process.  '  Let  the  concrete  come  first/ 
Newman  argues,  'and  the  so-called  universals  second.' 
He  went  back  to  the  days  of  his  childhood  when  he  was 
alone  with  the  Alone,  and  on  this  adamantine  basis  of 
reality  he  set  up  his  religion." 

In  principle,  it  will  be  seen — in  the  value  assigned  to 
personality — Newman  and  Wesley  are  alike  ;  but  Wesley 
did  not  "  go  back  to  his  childhood  "  in  search  of  God.  He 
found  a  constant  witness  to  the  existence  of  God  living 
within  him.  His  doctrine  of  the  witness  of  the  Spirit  is 
but  a  form  of  this  great  philosophy. 

Wesley  was  saved  from  sacerdotalism  by  the  touch  of 
his  mother's  hands ;  by  the  influence  of  Moravian  teach- 
ing ;  and  beyond  even  these  forces  by  the  grace  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  Yet  he  had  a  narrow  escape.  He  might  have 
been  an  eighteenth-century  Newman  !  And  though  it 
sounds  a  paradox,  it  is  sober  truth  that  Wesley  at  Oxford, 
in  1730,  made  Newman  at  Oxford,  in  1830,  possible. 
Wesley  left  the  sacerdotal  camp,  but  the  breath  of  his 
zeal  made  even  those  dry  bones  live.  He  created  a  new 
conscience  in  sacerdotalism,  and  from  that  new  conscience, 
stirring  like  some  strange  wine  in  old  bottles,  came  the 
whole  Tractarian  movement  of  the  Thirties. 

High  Church  Anglicanism  stands  to-day  on  that  via 
media  to  which  Newman  led  it,  and  at  which  point  he 
abandoned  it.  It  would  probably  scorn  the  suggestion 
that  it  owes  any  debt  to  Wesley.  It  certainly  displays  no 
sense  of  obligation  to  the  Church  which  Wesley  founded. 
And  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  too,  would  smile  at 
the  notion  that  it  owes  Wesley  anything  for  the  gift  of 
Newman.  And  yet,  if  the  indirect  influences  of  Wesley's 
work  are  followed,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  debt  is  un- 
deniable. If  Wesley  called  into  existence  a  new  Church, 
he  stirred  into  life  the  conscience  of  the  Church  he  left. 

If  we  come  down  to  later  times,  no  one  will  deny  that 
the  touch  of  Wesley's  hand,  the  breath  of  his  spirit,  is 
in  the  modern  Church.  The  Salvation  Army  is  one 
aspect  of  Wesley's  work — his  work  amongst  the  fallen 
and  the  outcast — revived  under  modern  conditions  and 
in  a  picturesque  shape.  The  Christian  Endeavour  Societies 

T 


290  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

are  Wesley's  great  institution  of  the  class-meeting  trans- 
lated into  modern  terms  and  made  to  serve  new  uses. 
All  the  great  city  missions  springing  up  under  every  sky 
have  in  them  the  very  spirit  of  Wesley.  If  modern 
religion  is  learning  to  take  social  forms,  if  it  is  expressing 
itself  in  terms  of  practical  beneficence,  this,  too,  is  part 
of  the  tradition  caught  from  Wesley.  For  he  first, 
amongst  the  religious  teachers  of  England,  charged  religion 
with  social  offices.  There  is  hardly  a  form  of  practical 
beneficence  the  world  knows  to-day  that  Wesley  did  not 
set  into  operation.  It  is  a  secular  historian  like  Lecky 
who  says :  "  Not  only  the  germs  of  almost  all  the  existing 
zeal  in  England  on  behalf  of  Christian  truth  and  life  are 
due  to  Methodism,  but  the  activity  stirred  up  in  other 
portions  of  Protestant  Europe  we  must  trace,  indirectly 
at  least,  to  Wesley."1  And  it  is  a  writer  of  Newman's 
school,  Palmer,  who  declares  that  "the  bold,  aggressive 
movement,  of  which  Wesley  was  the  symbol,  once  more 
made  Christianity  the  teacher  of  the  world." 

But  we  are  discussing  now  the  effect  produced  upon 
national  life  and  character  by  Wesley's  work,  rather  than 
any  ecclesiastical  change  it  wrought;  and  it  is  difficult 
to  write  on  this  without  seeming  to  exaggerate.  What 
was  it  that  saved  England  from  "  the  red  fool-fury  of  the 
Seine,"  and  kept  her  undestroyed  while  the  wild  forces 
of  the  Revolution  were  shaking  throne  and  Church  in 
France  into  ruin  ?  Maurice  tells  how  his  father  was 
accustomed  to  say  that  "England  escaped  a  political 
revolution  because  she  had  undergone  a  spiritual  revolu- 
tion " — that  brought  about  by  Wesley  and  Whitefield ; 
and  Lecky's  testimony  to  the  same  fact  is  emphatic. 
"  Many  causes,"  he  says,  "  conspired  to  save  England  from 
the  contagion  of  the  revolutionary  spirit  in  France,  but 
among  them  a  prominent  place  must  be  given  to  the 
new  and  vehement  enthusiasm  which  was  at  that  very 
time  passing  through  the  middle  and  lower  classes  of 
the  people."2 

It  is  historically  certain  that  English  Deism  helped  to 
produce  the  French  Revolution.  The  English  Deists 
supplied  Voltaire  and  his  school  with  arguments,  and 

1  Lecky,  vol.  ii.  p.  521.  2  Ibid.,  p.  636. 


HOW    WESLEY    AFFECTED    ENGLAND  291 

in  France  these  arguments  found  a  soil  in  which  they 
struck  deep  root;  or,  to  vary  the  figure,  they  acted  as 
sparks  cast  into  some  inflammable  vapour.  But  why 
did  the  very  teaching  which,  although  a  foreign  importa- 
tion, produced  such  effects  in  France,  fail  completely  in 
England,  its  native  soil  ?  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in 
Wesley  and  the  revival  linked  to  his  name.  If  Wesley 
had  been  an  English  Voltaire,  corroding  all  belief  with 
the  acid  of  his  wit,  and  distilling  the  gall  of  his  bitter 
spirit  into  the  blood  of  the  nation,  there  might  have 
been  a  Reign  of  Terror  in  London  as  well  as  in  Paris ! 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  at  this  time  a  new  social 
movement — the  rise  of  the  great  manufacturing  industries 
of  Great  Britain — was  shifting  the  whole  centre  of  national 
life.  It  was  a  movement  which  has  yielded  splendid 
results,  but  its  birth  was  attended  with  the  gravest 
social  perils.  It  was  a  movement  of  disintegration, 
disordering  the  social  relations  of  whole  classes.  It 
altered  the  very  type  of  national  life.  It  increased  the 
sum  total  of  wealth,  but  totally  changed  its  distribution ;  it 
made,  for  a  time  at  least,  the  rich  richer,  the  poor  poorer. 
It  kindled  a  war  which  has  not  since  found  a  truce 
betwixt  Labour  and  Capital.  It  drew  together  all  the  in- 
flammable elements  of  the  nation.  It  tended  to  weaken 
if  not  arrest  moral  forces,  and  to  substitute  for  them 
forces  non-moral  and  anti-social — greed  of  money,  class 
jealousy,  selfishness.  Lecky  describes  it  as  "peculiarly 
fortunate"  that  the  emergence  of  this  great  social  phe- 
nomenon in  England  should  have  been  preceded  by  "a 
religious  revival  which  opened  a  new  spring  of  moral 
and  religious  energy  among  the  poor,  and  at  the  same 
tune  gave  a  powerful  impulse  to  the  philanthropy  of  the 
rich."  But  was  it  merely  a  stroke  of  "  peculiar  good 
fortune  "  which  explains  the  appearance,  at  this  supreme 
and  critical  moment  in  national  history,  of  the  great 
Methodist  revival  ?  It  was  the  providence  of  God,  the 
working  of  that  divine  Will  which  shapes  human  history 
to  the  pattern  of  the  divine  counsels. 

Sometimes  in  nations,  as  in  individuals,  the  creed  has 
no  relation  to  the  conscience.  But  the  great  revival 
made  Christianity  authoritative  on  the  moral  sense  of 
the  nation,  and  in  that  aueust  change  lay  the  secret  of 


292  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

a  thousand  other  changes.  Who  watches  the  emergence 
of  that  new  force  in  English  history,  and  traces  its 
workings  in  the  national  life,  has  the  key  to  nearly 
everything  noble  in  modern  British  legislation. 

There  were  of  course  many  forces  which,  for  the 
moment,  postponed,  or  obscured — though  they  did  not 
destroy — the  growth  of  those  seeds  of  justice  and  good- 
ness which  the  revival  planted  on  the  soil  of  English 
character.  The  Great  War  with  France,  for  example, 
had  been  in  progress  for  ten  years  when  Wesley  died,  and 
it  lasted  ten  years  after  his  death.  How  profoundly 
that  war,  both  during  its  course  and  after  it  had  closed, 
deflected  the  national  life  is  not  easily  realised.  As 
one  result  Parliament  remained  unreformed,  and  utterly 
failed  to  reflect  the  national  conscience.  It  is  difficult  to- 
day to  realise  the  evils  of  the  old  electoral  system.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  House  of  Commons  were  simply  appointed 
by  rich  men.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  owned  eleven 
members,  Lord  Lonsdale  owned  nine.  Old  Sarum  had 
two  members,  but  not  a  single  inhabitant.  Seventy 
members  were  returned  by  thirty-five  electorates  which, 
all  put  together,  counted  hardly  as  many  voters.  Three 
hundred  members,  it  was  estimated,  were  returned  by  160 
persons,  while  great  cities  had  not  a  single  member. 

Under  such  conditions,  the  better  ideals  which  Wesley's 
work  had  created  could  not  find  expression  in  public  law. 
Legislation  was  partial,  justice  was  still  brutal.  There 
were  still  253  capital  offences  on  the  Statute-Book.  If  a 
man  injured  Westminster  Bridge  he  was  hanged  ;  if  he 
cut  down  a  young  tree,  if  he  shot  a  rabbit,  if  he  stole 
property  valued  at  five  shillings,  he  was  hanged.  So  late 
as  1816  there  were  at  one  time  in  Newgate  fifty-eight 
persons  under  sentence  of  death,  one  of  them  a  child  of 
ten  years  old.  Romney  tells  the  story  of  two  men,  partners 
in  the  same  offence,  who  were  tried  for  robbery.  One 
man  moved  the  pity  of  the  jury.  They  found  him  guilty 
of  robbery  to  the  extent  of  43.  lod. ;  the  other  was  found 
guilty  of  theft  to  the  extent  of  55.,  and  that  extra  twopence 
was  for  one  man  fatal.  It  measured  the  difference  betwixt 
life  and  death  !  Cruelty,  in  brief,  ran  through  the  whole 
gamut  of  social  life.  Women  worked  in  coal-pits,  crawling 
like  animals  on  hands  and  feet  in  the  darkness  of  the  mine. 


HOW   WESLEY   AFFECTED   ENGLAND  293 

Children  of  six  were  habitually  employed.  Down  to  1 804 
the  rights  of  working  men  to  combine  were  regulated  by 
a  law  passed  at  the  date  of  the  battle  of  Bannockburn. 
More  tnan  one-half  of  the  entire  children  of  England  grew 
up  without  education. 

Taxes  were  inevitable ;  but  the  system  of  taxation  was 
cruel,  and  stupid  to  a  degree  almost  incredible.  Salt  was 
taxed  to  the  extent  of  forty  tunes  its  'cost,  and  on  the  coast 
the  poor  used  sea-water  to  take  its  place  in  cooking.  Paper 
was  taxed  threepence  per  pound,  newspapers  four  pence  per 
copy,  advertisements  three  shillings  and  sixpence  for  each 
issue.  The  law,  that  is,  was  used  to  kill  the  very  oppor- 
tunities of  knowledge.  England,  too,  was  cursed  in  the 
latter  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  by  a  lunatic  king 
and  a  distracted  regency;  and  later  by  a  monarch, 
George  IV.,  who  would  have  been  less  of  a  scandal  to 
the  nation  if  he  had  been  a  lunatic. 

And  all  this  was  after  Wesley  had  quickened  the  con- 
science of  the  nation,  and  poured  the  wine  of  a  new 
humanity  into  its  veins  !  Why  was  that  new  conscience 
so  late  in  making  itself  effective  ?  For  an  answer,  let  the 
disturbing  forces  we  have  recited  be  considered ;  the  dis- 
tractions of  the  Great  War,  the  mischiefs  of  a  vicious 
system  of  politics,  the  influence  of  a  corrupt  court,  the 
persistence  of  ancient  and  cruel  forms  of  legislation ;  and 
it  will  be  understood  how  even  the  new  conscience  which 
Wesley  had  created  in  the  nation  found  late  and  imperfect 
expression  in  public  affairs. 

Wesley's  convinced  and  passionate  opposition  to  slavery 
is  historic,  and  it  is  the  more  remarkable  because  it  was  so 
much  in  advance  of  the  sentiments  of  his  age.  The  British 
Parliament,  during  the  eighteenth  century,  it  must  be 
remembered  passed  no  less  than  twenty-three  Acts  of 
Parliament,  benevolently  "regulating"  the  slave  traffic. 
By  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht  (1713)  Great  Britain  undertook 
to  furnish  annually  to  South  America  4800  negroes,  and 
to  do  this  for  thirty  years ;  and  the  contract  was  renewed 
in  1748.  Great  Britain,  that  is,  ignobly  turned,  on  this 
gigantic  scale,  slave-provider  for  the  Spaniard!  And  it 
was  not  the  political  conscience  merely  that  was  utterly 
without  sensitiveness  to  what  Wesley  described  "  that  sum 
of  all  villainy,"  the  slave  trade;  tne  clerical  conscience 


294  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

was  equally  torpid.  A  great  ecclesiastical  dignitary,  the 
Bishop  of  London,  in  a  pastoral  issued  in  1727,  declared 
that  "  Christianity  and  the  embracing  of  the  Gospel  does 
not  make  the  least  alteration  in  civil  property,"  even 
though  that  "property"  consisted  of  human  flesh  and 
blood ! 

When  at  last  a  reform  of  the  franchise  made  Parliament 
a  true  expression  of  the  national  conscience  then  came  the 
great  procession  of  humanitarian  Acts.  The  revolt  against 
the  slave  trade,  and  Howard's  reform  of  the  prisons,  were 
the  earliest  and  happiest  expressions  of  the  new  conscience 
thus  created.  The  new  sense  of  justice,  of  human  equality, 
of  the  dignity  and  worth  of  human  nature,  whicn  went 
with  the  Great  Revival  found  expression  in  the  reform 
of  the  courts,  the  purification  of  the  criminal  code,  the 
great  Reform  Bill  ot  1836,  and  the  humane  legislation 
linked  to  the  name  of  Shaftesbury.  Wesley  and  the 
Evangelicals  generally  were  against  Catholic  relief,  and 
against  the  repeal  of  the  Test  Act — a  fact  which  proves 
that  they  were  imperfectly  emancipated  from  the  evil 
conditions  of  their  own  times,  and  that  intelligence  in 
them  did  not  keep  pace  with  conscience.  But  the  prin- 
ciples they  taught,  and  the  new  spirit  they  introduced 
into  national  affairs,  were  powerful  dissolvents,  in  which 
the  cruel  legislation  of  earlier  years — legislation  which 
undertook  to  make  injustice  the  guard,  and  cruelty  the 
servant,  of  religion — disappeared. 

A  century,  it  may  be  added,  is  but  a  hand-breadth  in 
the  life  of  a  nation.  Let  the  vision  take  a  wider  range, 
and  it  will  be  seen  that  betwixt  the  England  of  1 703  and 
the  England  of  1903  there  is  the  most  amazing  difference. 
The  little  cluster  of  islands,  with  its  scanty  fringe  of 
quarrelling  colonies,  has  become  an  empire  whose  flag 
floats  over  one-fifth  of  the  surface  of  the  planet,  and 
almost  one-fourth  of  the  human  race.  But  the  differ- 
ence in  scale  and  power  which  marks  the  empire  is 
even  less  impressive  than  the  advance  in  its  ideals  and 
temper.  A  new  conscience  has  been  created ;  a  new 
humanity  breathes  throughout  society;  new  ideals  of 
legislation  register  themselves  on  the  Statute-Book. 
Great  Britain  has  many  problems  still  unsolved,  many 
characteristic  evils  yet  unvanquished.  But  let  it  be  set  in 


HOW    WESLEY    AFFECTED    ENGLAND  295 

the  perspective  of  history ;  let  it  be  measured  against  the 
great  empires  of  other  days.  And  with  all  its  imperfec- 
tions it  is  certain  that  it  more  nearly  approaches  the  ideals 
of  Christianity  than  any  other  community  in  which  men 
have  ever  dwelt  together. 

To  the  creation  of  this  freer  and  nobler  England  a 
thousand  forces  have  co-operated.  But  if  that  tangled 
web  of  contributing  forces  be  disentangled,  the  richest  and 
strongest  are  those  which  belong  to  religion.  And  who 
will  deny  that,  of  these,  the  most  influential  and  effective 
are  those  which  gather  round  Wesley  and  the  evangelical 
revival  of  the  eighteenth  century !  And  the  secret  lies 
not  so  much  in  the  man,  as  in  the  message ;  not  in  the 
teacher,  but  in  the  thing  taught ;  not  in  the  human  agent, 
but  in  the  spiritual  forces  of  which  he  was  the  channel. 


BOOK  IV 

THE   EVOLUTION  OF   A   CHURCH 


CHAPTER   I 

WESLEY   AS    A   CHURCH-BUILDER 

IN  a  life  such  as  Wesley's  a  point  is  at  last  reached  at 
which  its  relation  to  history  has  to  be  determined.  The 
story  ceases,  to  be  biography,  and  becomes,  in  some 
large  and  permanent  sense,  history.  Let  Wesley  be 
pictured  in  mid-career  as  he  stands,  say,  preaching  to  a 
crowd  of  10,000  people  at  Moorfields,  or  to  one  of  20,000 
at  Gwennap  Pit,  and  let  him  be  looked  at,  say,  through 
John  Nelson's  eyes.  The  honest  Yorkshireman  had  no 
gift  of  imagination  and  no  trick  of  literary  picturesque- 
ness.  He  can  only  describe  what  he  sees,  but  he  sees 
with  curiously  direct  and  uncoloured  vision.  We  have 
already  quoted  his  vivid  account  of  the  first  time  he 
heard  Wesley  preach ;  how  "  as  soon  as  he  got  upon  the 
stand  he  stroked  back  his  hair  and  turned  his  face  towards 
where  I  stood,  and  I  thought  he  fixed  his  eyes  on  me. 
His  countenance  struck  such  an  awful  dread  upon  me 
before  I  heard  him  speak  that  it  made  my  heart  beat  like 
the  pendulum  of  a  clock,  and  when  he  did  speak  I  thought 
his  whole  discourse  was  aimed  at  me.  When  he  had  done 
I  said,  '  This  man  can  tell  the  secrets  of  my  heart.' " 

This,  says  Southey,  was  Wesley's  secret  of  power  as 
a  speaker.  He  never  generalised.  He  spoke  not  to  the 
crowd,  but  to  the  individual. 

"  The  preacher's  words  were  like  the  eyes  of  a  portrait  which 
seemed  to  look  at  every  beholder. 

"  '  Who,'  said  the  preacher,  '  Who  art  thou,  that  now  seest  and 
feelest  both  thine  inward  and  outward  ungodliness?  Thou  art 
the  man  !  I  want  thee  for  my  Lord  !  I  challenge  thee  for  a  child 
of  God  by  faith.  The  Lord  hath  need  of  thee.  Thou  who  feelest 
thou  art  just  fit  for  hell,  art  just  fit  to  advance  His  glory — the  glory 
of  His  free  grace,  justifying  the  ungodly  and  him  that  worketh 
not.  O  come  quickly  !  Believe  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and 
thou,  even  thou,  art  reconciled  to  God.' " 


300  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Multiply  a  scene  like  this,  and  utterances  like  these, 
through  half  a  century,  and  over  the  whole  area  of  the 
United  Kingdom !  Here  is  visibly  a  man  who  is  mov- 
ing a  nation.  He  is  a  man,  too,  who  can  translate 
his  message  into  terms  of  literature,  and  write  it  in 
imperishable  words.  Here  is  a  passage,  for  example,  from 
his  "  Appeal  to  Men  of  Reason  and  Religion  "  which  may 
be  taken  as  an  example  of  the  character  and  force  of  his 
teaching : — 

"  Faith  ...  is  with  regard  to  the  spiritual  world  what  sense  is 
with  regard  to  the  natural  world.  It  is  the  .  .  .  feeling  of  the 
soul  whereby  a  believer  perceives  the  presence  of  Him  in  whom 
he  lives,  moves,  and  has  his  being,  and  indeed  the  whole  in- 
visible world,  the  entire  system  of  things  eternal.  By  this  faith 
we  are  saved  from  all  uneasiness  of  mind,  from  the  anguish  of  a 
wounded  spirit,  from  discontent,  from  fear,  and  sorrow  of  heart, 
from  that  inexpressible  listlessness  and  weariness  both  of  the 
world  and  ourselves  which  we  had  so  helplessly  laboured  under 
for  so  many  years — especially  when  we  were  out  of  the  hurry  of 
the  world,  and  sunk  in  calm  reflection.  This  we  know  and  feel, 
and  cannot  but  declare,  saves  every  one  that  partakes  of  it  both 
from  sin  and  misery,  from  every  unhappy  and  every  unholy 
temper — 

'  Soft  peace  she  brings  ;  wherever  she  arrives 
She  builds  our  quiet,  as  she  forms  our  lives ; 
Lays  the  rough  paths  of  peevish  nature  even, 
And  opens  in  each  heart  a  little  heaven.' " 

But  is  all  this  mere  air-drawn  rhetoric  ?  Is  it  that  sus- 
pected, dreaded,  hated  thing,  "  enthusiasm  "  ?  No  !  Wesley 
claims  it  is  the  highest  form  of  reason.  It  belongs  to  the 
realm  of  certainties : — 

"  We  join  with  you  [i.e.  the  men  of  reason]  in  desiring  a  religion 
founded  on  reason,  and  every  way  agreeable  thereto.  But  one 
question  remains :  What  do  you  mean  by  reason  ?  I  suppose 
you  mean  the  eternal  reason,  the  nature  of  things,  the  nature  of 
God,  and  the  nature  of  man,  with  the  relations  necessarily  existing 
between  them.  Why,  this  is  the  religion  we  preach — a  religion 
evidently  founded  on,  and  every  way  agreeable  to,  natural  reason, 
to  the  essential  nature  of  things  :  to  the  nature  of  God,  for  it 
begins  in  knowing  Him,  it  ends  in  doing  His  will  :  to  the  nature 
of  man,  for  it  begins  in  a  man's  knowing  himself  to  be  what  he 


WESLEY    AS    A   CHURCH-BUILDER  301 

truly  is,  foolish,  vicious,  miserable.  It  goes  on  to  point  the  true 
remedy  for  this,  to  make  him  truly  wise,  virtuous,  and  happy,  as 
every  thinking  mind  (perhaps  with  some  implicit  remembrance  of 
what  it  originally  was)  longs  to  be.  It  finishes  all  by  restoring 
to  due  relations  between  God  and  man ;  by  uniting  for  ever  the 
tender  Father  and  the  grateful,  obedient  son,  the  great  Lord 
of  all,  and  the  .faithful  servant,  doing  not  his  own  will  but  the 
will  of  Him  that  sent  him." 


Such  a  man,  we  repeat — with  such  a  message,  and 
such  energy  to  deliver  it — is  from  any  point  of  view  a 
great  figure.  He  must  profoundly  affect  his  generation. 

But  there  is  nothing  necessarily  permanent  in  his 
work.  The  orator's  voice  is  hushed ;  the  crowds  are 
gone,  the  emotions  the  ringing  words  awakened  are 
dead.  Who  to-day  reads  the  "Appeal,"  even  though  it 
stands  unmatched  for  force  in  the  religious  literature  of 
its  century  ?  Had  Wesley  done  nothing  more  than 
preach  or  write,  his  memory  might  have  faded.  But  at 
this  stage  Wesley  links  himself  by  one  great  achieve- 
ment, not  merely  to  English  history,  but  to  the  history 
of  religion.  He  creates  a  Church !  He  did  not  do  this 
consciously,  or  of  deliberate  purpose.  He  strove,  indeed, 
not  to  do  it ;  he  protested  he  would  never  do  it.  But 
as  history  shows,  he  actually  did  it !  And  since  history 
is  not  so  much  philosophy  teaching  by  examples  as  God 
interpreting  Himself  by  events,  we  are  entitled  to  say 
that  Wesley,  in  laying  the  foundations  of  a  new  Church, 
did  something  that,  no  doubt,  outran  his  own  human 
vision,  but  which  fulfilled  a  divine  purpose. 

To  destroy  a  Church  is  easy.  But  to  build  one  is  a 
task  requiring  not  only  the  highest  gifts  of  intellect  and 
the  richest  endowments  of  spiritual  energy,  but  a  com- 
bination of  external  circumstances  and  forces  such  as 
does  not  often  occur  in  human  history.  To  set  up  a 
sect  is  not  difficult.  Small  men  can  do  it ;  small  passions 
make  it  possible.  A  quarrelsome  temper,  a  loud  voice, 
and  a  sufficient  absence  of  humour  to  enable  the  per- 
former to  take  himself  seriously  —  to  announce  at  the 
top  of  his  voice,  for  example,  that  he  is  the  reincarnation 
of  Elijah  or  of  John  the  Baptist — these  are  qualities  and 
performances  that,  for  a  time,  will  generate  a  sect.  But 


302  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

a  Church,  a  true  province  of  the  spiritual  kingdom  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  within  whose  bounds  millions  of 
devout  souls  may  dwell;  a  Church  which  creates  and 
trains  a  ministry,  sends  out  missions,  builds  great  insti- 
tutions, and  lives  with  a  life  that  grows  ever  richer  while 
generations  pass — this  is  one  of  the  great  things  of  his- 
tory. Its  origin  does  not,  indeed,  belong  to  the  category 
of  human  forces.  Its  secret  and  explanation  lie  in  the 
divine  realm.  And  that  Wesley,  without  deliberately 
intending  it,  built  an  indestructible  Church  is  the  fact 
that  gives  to  his  career  the  scale  of  history. 

Each  Church  is  an  attempt  to  translate  Christianity 
into  a  working  formula;  and  Wesley  added  one  more 
such  formula  to  the  spiritual  history  of  the  race.  And 
it  is  a  formula  which  endures !  No  one  can  write  a 
history  of  Christianity  in  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth 
centuries  and  leave  out  Methodism. 

Whitefield  stopped  short  of  this  great  achievement. 
He  was  a  greater  preacher  than  Wesley ;  but  he  was 
only  a  preacher,  and  so  his  biography  never  takes  the 
imperishable  scale  and  range  of  history.  Charles 
Wesley  lives  by  his  hymns.  He  found  a  vehicle  for  the 
religious  emotions  which  Churches  of  every  name  and 
type  accept  and  use,  and  will  continue  to  use  till  the 
sound  of  the  last  earthly  hymn  melts  into  the  eternal 
harmonies  of  heaven.  But  this,  in  the  case  of  Charles 
Wesley,  was  but  an  accident  of  spiritual  genius.  What 
place  in  history,  again,  would  Ignatius  Loyola  have  apart 
from  the  great  religious  Order  he  created  ?  Wesley's  fame 
is  imperishable  because,  somehow,  he  created  an  imperish- 
able institution. 

And  in  the  story  of  Wesley's  work  nothing  is  more 
remarkable  than  the  narrow  limits  of  time  within  which 
the  movement  he  inspired  crystallised  into  definite  form, 
a  form  which,  as  though  shaped  by  unseen  hands  to  un- 
seen ends,  had  the  prophecy  and  the  assurance  of  endur- 
ing existence.  Wesley,  as  we  have  seen,  spent  thirteen 
sad,  slow,  blundering  years  in  solving  the  problem  of 
religion  for  himself.  But  having  solved  it,  the  whole  of 
his  life  instantly  gained  a  certain  swiftness  of  movement 
and  certainty  of  goal  it  would  be  difficult  to  match  in 
religious  history.  And  in  five  brief,  hurrying  years — 


WESLEY    AS    A    CHURCH-BUILDER  303 

years  full  of  controversies  and  distractions — he  practi- 
cally shaped,  and  shaped  for  all  time,  the  Church  which 
bears  his  name.  Two  wonders,  indeed,  are  visible  in 
this  aspect  of  Wesley's  work;  the  absence  of  any  clear 
intention  to  create  a  Church,  and  yet  the  swiftness,  the 
sagacity,  the  certainty  of  aim  and  stroke,  with  which 
that  work  was  actually  done. 

A  cluster  of  dates  in  the  almanac — dates  covering  only 
five  years — will  serve  to  show  with  how  little  of  delay, 
of  uncertain  experiments,  of  wasted  efforts,  a  great  Church 
was  evolved : — 

"  J739 — April  2. — Wesley  preaches  his  first' open-air  sermon  at 
Kingswood.  May  12. — Foundation  of  first  Methodist  preaching 
place  laid  at  Bristol.  June. — Foundation  of  school  laid  at  Kings- 
wood.  October  15. — Wesley  sets  out  for  Wales,  beginning  his 
itinerancy.  November. — First  Methodist  preaching  house,  the 
Foundry,  opened  in  London  ;  first  Methodist  stewards  appointed  ; 
first  hymn-book  published ;  first  Methodist  Society  formed  ;  first 
lay  preacher,  Maxfield,  employed. 

"  1740. — Wesley  separates  from  the  Moravians  ;  controversy  on 
Predestination  with  Whitefield  begun  ;  the  theology  of  Methodism 
shaped. 

"1742 — February  15. — Societies  divided  into  classes;  first 
mention  of  class-leaders.  April. — First  watch-night  in  London  ; 
quarterly  visitation  of  classes  by  preachers  established  ;  tickets  of 
membership  used. 

"  1743 — May  i. — Rules  of  the  Society  published. 

"  1744 — June  25. — First  Conference  met  in  London." 

Here,  compressed  into  a  dozen  lines,  and  into  five 
brief  years,  is  Methodism  in  all  its  essential  features, 
in  clearest  outline.  During  the  160  years  which  have 
passed  since,  Methodism  has  witnessed  many  changes  in 
form,  but  absolutely  no  change  in  principle.  These 
great  formative  years  determined  what  is  characteristic 
and  vital  in  it.  The  first  Methodist  Conference  in  his- 
tory assembled  on  June  25,  1744.  It  consisted  of  only 
ten  men.  Its  record  includes  a  description  of  "  The 
Society  and  its  Officers,"  which  might  stand  to-day,  with 
some  changes  in  names,  for  contemporary  Methodism. 

The  secret  of  the  swift,  definite,  and  symmetrical  evolu- 
tion of  Methodism  in  a  period  of  time  so  brief  is  found, 


304  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

in  the  main,  in  Wesley  himself;  and  it  is  curious  to 
note  how  much  of  the  fitness  which  lies  in  unconscious 
natural  genius,  as  well  as  of  the  fitness  which  comes  of 
equally  unconscious  education  and  training  for  the  work 
of  a  Church-builder,  Wesley  had.  These  five  great 
shaping  years  found  Wesley,  for  one  thing,  at  the  high- 
water  mark  of  energy  and  power.  They  cover  the  best 
years  of  his  life,  say  from  thirty-six  to  forty-one.  All 
the  apparently  wasted  experiences  of  his  career  now 
found  their  office  and  use.  His  equipment  of  knowledge 
was  singularly  wide.  To  the  discipline  of  a  godly  home, 
of  a  great  public  school,  and  of  an  ancient  University 
had  been  added  the  experiences  of  a  new  settlement  in 
America,  and  the  teaching  of  the  Moravian  settlements 
in  Germany. 

Wesley,  as  we  have  seen,  had  personally  gone  through 
the  whole  gamut  of  possible  religious  experience.  He 
was  familiar  with  all  schools  of  religious  thought.  He 
knew  Protestantism  in  its  two  great  forms  —  Anglican 
and  German.  He  was  familiar,  indeed,  with  every  school 
of  theology  and  every  variety  of  ecclesiastical  use.  He 
knew  men,  cities,  books,  churches,  history.  No  develop- 
ment of  human  nature  and  no  turn  of  ecclesiastical  polity 
found  him  unprepared. 

Wesley's  temperament  helped  him,  as  well  as  his 
training.  He  was  not  of  the  French  but  of  the  English 
type.  He  cared  little  for  theories  and  much  for  facts. 
He  was  always  willing  to  be  wiser  to-day  than  he  was 
yesterday.  He  dealt  with  difficulties  as  they  arose,  and 
not  till  they  arose.  He  had  many  prejudices,  and  they 
were  of  a  robust  sort;  but  he  only  kept  a  prejudice  so 
long  as  it  agreed  with  facts.  This  side  of  his  character 
finds  an  almost  amusing  illustration  in  the  way  in  which 
he  dealt  with  what  was,  to  him,  the  alarming  pheno- 
menon of  a  layman  preaching.  He  heard  at  Bristol  that 
his  helper,  Maxfield,  had  crossed  the  mystic  border  line 
which  separates  an  exhortation  from  a  sermon,  and  the 
story  has  already  been  told  of  how  Wesley  rode  post 
haste  to  London  to  trample  out  the  first  sparks  of  what 
might  prove  to  be  a  conflagration.  His  mother's  calm 
eyes  and  quiet  speech  arrested  him.  She  made  the  one 
appeal  which,  to  Wesley's  reason  and  conscience  alike, 


WESLEY    AS    A    CHURCH-BUILDER  305 

was  irresistible.  This  new  and  alarming  phenomenon 
must,  after  all,  be  judged  by  the  question :  "  Does  God 
use  it  ? " 

Wesley  looks  clear-eyed  at  the  facts.  They  are  in 
conflict  with  the  mental  habits  of  a  lifetime,  and  with 
that  most  obstinate  of  all  forms  of  human  prejudice,  the 
bias  of  an  ecclesiastic.  But  the  facts  are  plain.  God 
visibly  blesses  the  preaching  of  this  layman,  and  Wesley 
instantly  surrenders  his  opposition.  "  It  is  the  Lord," 
he  says;  "let  Him  do  what  seemeth  Him  good."  And 
so  he  gave  to  Methodism  one  of  the  supreme  secrets  of 
its  strength,  the  partnership  of  laymen  with  ministers 
in  the  great  business  of  preaching. 

There  was  in  Wesley,  with  all  his  daring  and  enthu- 
siasm, no  touch  of  the  fanatic's  scorn  of  prudence.  Few 
men  ever  lived  who  excelled  him  in  the  wise  adaptation 
of  means  to  ends.  At  the  first  Methodist  Conference  in 
1744,  what  may  be  called  the  whole  strategy  of  the  re- 
vival was  discussed.  The  question  was  proposed,  "What 
is  the  best  way  of  spreading  the  Gospel?"  The  answer 
is,  "To  go  a  little  and  a  little  farther  from  London, 
Bristol,  bt.  Ives,  Newcastle,  or  any  other  Society,  so  a 
little  leaven  would  spread  with  more  effect  and  less 
noise,  and  help  would  always  be  at  hand."  There  speaks 
the  practical  genius  of  a  true  leader  of  men !  Wesley, 
it  is  clear,  would  have  made  a  great  soldier.  In  military 
terms,  he  kept  touch  with  his  base.  He  did  not  merely 
overrun  a  district ;  he  took  possession  of  it  and  entrenched 
himself  in  it. 

And  not  only  by  training,  and  by  the  practical  bent  of 
his  genius,  but  by  the  nature  of  his  beliefs,  Wesley  at 
this  stage  was  admirably  fitted  for  giving  shape  to  a  new 
Church.  Most  Christians  have  an  easy,  careless  belief 
that  the  Holy  Spirit  once  dwelt  in  the  Church  and 
shaped  its  history;  but  the  unspoken  addition  to  that 
belief  is  that  He  dwells  in  it  no  more.  His  gracious 
offices  are  nineteen  hundred  years  distant !  Now  Wesley 
believed  with  enthusiastic  certainty  that  the  Holy  Ghost 
was  in  the  world  on  whose  soil  he  trod,  and  was  inspiring 
the  life  and  shaping  the  development  of  the  Church 
about  him.  That  the  offices  of  the  Holy  Ghost  belong 
not  merely  to  history,  but  to  biology,  is  a  great  and 

U 


30 G  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

fruitful  belief  carrying  with  it  strange  consequences; 
and  it  is  much  rarer  than  we  quite  realise. 

"  Antiquity  "  is  a  word  of  irresistible  authority  to  many 
good  people,  but  they  discover  antiquity  at  the  wrong 
point.  In  the  true  sense,  "  antiquity  "  lies  about  us  !  The 
Church  of  1744,  when  Wesley  put  his  impress  on  reli- 
gious history,  was  nearly  eighteen  centuries  older  than  the 
Church  of  apostolic  days ;  and  unless  God's  education  of 
His  Church  had  utterly  failed,  it  ought  to  have  been 
illuminated  with  richer  light  and  nearer  the  divine 
ideal.  Certainly  the  offices  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
Church"  of  to-day  may  be  expected  to  be,  not  scantier, 
but  ampler,  than  in  the  first  century.  And  Wesley  learned 
to  see  the  movements  of  that  divine  Spirit  in  tne  events 
about  him,  in  the  experiences  of  his  converts,  in  the 
strange  forces  which  drew  such  vast  crowds  to  his 
preaching,  and  in  the  waves  of  emotion  which  swept 
over  them.  He  recognised  the  guidance  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  too,  in  the  dim,  half-seen  outlines  of  the  great 
institution — Society  or  Church,  Wesley  himself  hardly 
knew  which — taking  shape  about  him. 

If  the  movement,  again,  be  looked  at  as  a  bit  of  human 
history,  it  is  clear  that  many  of  the  features  of  Wesley's 
work  were  determined  by  forces  outside  himself,  and  re- 
present not  his  choice,  but  the  imperative  compulsion 
of  events.  He  was  an  outdoor  preacher,  for  example,  by 
mere  necessity.  The  churches  were  shut  against  him ; 
he  could  find  no  pulpit  but  the  open  moor,  the  street 
corner,  his  father's  gravestone. 

How  much  open-air  preaching  shocked  Wesley's  pre- 
judices as  a  divine  and  his  fastidiousness  as  a  scholar  is 
proved  over  and  over  again.  He  demands  of  his  brother 
clergymen  what  would  induce  them  to  face  the  discom- 
forts and  dangers  of  this  strange  service  : — 

"  'Who  is  there  among  you,'  he  says,  '  that  is  willing  (examine 
your  own  hearts)  even  to  save  souls  from  death  at  this  price? 
Would  not  you  let  a  thousand  souls  perish  rather  than  you  would 
be  the  instrument  of  rescuing  them  thus1?  Can  you  bear  the 
summer  sun  to  beat  upon  your  naked  head?  Can  you  suffer  the 
wintry  rain  or  wind,  from  whatever  quarter  it  blows  ?  Are  you 
able  to  stand  in  the  open-air,  without  any  covering  or  defence, 
when  God  casteth  abroad  His  snow  like  wool,  or  scattereth  His 


WESLEY   AS    A   CHURCH-BUILDER  307 

hoar-frost  like  ashes?  And  yet  these  are  some  of  the  smallest 
inconveniences  which  accompany  field-preaching.  For  beyond 
all  these  are  the  contradiction  of  sinners,  the  scoffs  both  of  the 
great,  vulgar,  and  small ;  contempt  and  reproach  of  every  kind — 
often  more  than  verbal  affronts — stupid,  brutal  violence,  some- 
times to  the  hazard  of  health,  or  limbs,  or  life.  Brethren,  do 
you  envy  us  this  honour?  What,  I  pray  you,  would  buy  you 
to  be  a  field-preacher?  Or  what,  think  you,  could  induce  any 
man  of  common-sense  to  continue  therein  one  year,  unless  he 
had  a  full  conviction  in  himself  that  it  was  the  will  of  God  con- 
cerning him.  Upon  this  conviction  it  is  that  we  now  do  for  the 
good  of  souls  what  you  cannot,  will  not,  dare  not  do.' " l 

In  the  same  way,  by  the  mere  compulsion  of  events 
Wesley  became  an  itinerant  preacher,  though  most  of  his 
habits,  all  his  prejudices,  and  some  of  the  deepest  instincts 
of  his  nature  were  opposed  to  it.  There  was  in  Wesley's 
very  blood  a  semi-monkish  love  of  solitude ;  and  had  he 
been  by  accident  of  birth  and  training  a  Roman  Catholic, 
he  certainly,  at  one  stage  of  his  career  at  all  events,  would 
have  found  his  retreat  in  a  cell.  When  the  brothers 
returned  from  America,  his  brother  writes,  they  "  were 
resolved  to  retire  out  of  the  world  at  once,  being  sated 
with  noise,  hurry,  and  fatigue."  All  he  asked  on  this  side 
of  eternity  was  solitude.  "  We  want  nothing,  we  look  for 
nothing  more  in  this  world."  WTiitefield  strongly  urged 
Charles  Wesley  to  accept  a  college  living.  To  become  a 
pair  of  ecclesiastical  vagrants,  hastening  from  village  to 
village,  and  preaching  to  an  unending  succession  of  acci- 
dental crowds,  was  the  last  thing  of  which  the  brothers 
dreamed.  "We  were  dragged  out  again  and  againj"  says 
Wesley,  "  to  preach  at  one  place  and  another,  and  so 
carried  on  we  knew  not  how,  without  any  design  but  the 
general  one  of  saving  souls,  into  a  situation  which,  had  it 
been  named  to  us  at  first,  would  have  appeared  far  worse 
than  death." 

Wesley,  in  brief,  was  an  itinerant  malgrS  lui.  There 
were,  of  course,  great  historic  precedents  for  an  itinerant 
ministry,  ranging  from  the  early  Saxon  bishops  down  to 
the  mendicant  Orders  of  the  Roman  Church  and  the 
chaplains  of  Edward  VI. — of  whom  John  Knox  was  one. 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  292. 


308  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

In  Cromwell's  time  the  proposal  to  turn  all  the  parish 
ministers  of  England  into  itinerants  was  only  lost  in  what 
is  known  as  the  "  little  "  Parliament  by  two  votes.  Wesley, 
however,  was  moved  to  undertake  an  itinerant  ministry, 
not  out  of  any  regard  to  ancient  precedent,  but  by  the 
actual  necessities  of  the  work  he  had  undertaken. 

But  these  two  features  of  that  work — open-air  preach- 
ing and  the  itinerant  nature  of  his  ministry — determined 
many  other  things.  They  determined,  for  example,  the 
general  question  of  Wesley's  relation  to  ecclesiastical  order. 
For  that  order  he  had  been,  and  still  was,  a  zealot ;  but  he 
was  slowly  learning  that  there  were  things  more  precious, 
as  well  as  more  urgent,  than  mere  ecclesiastical  use  and 
wont.  England  was  mapped  out,  for  example,  into 
parishes ;  and  were  these  faint  lines  of  ecclesiastical 
boundaries,  drawn  by  human  hands  and  guarding  fancied 
human  rights,  to  arrest  such  a  work  as  Wesley  was  begin- 
ning ?  They  were  like  films  of  cobweb  drawn  across  a 
track  of  an  earthquake !  And  many  an  ecclesiastical 
cobweb  of  the  same  kind  had  to  be  brushed  aside  to  make 
room  for  the  new  religious  life  beginning  to  stir  in  Great 
Britain. 

Wesley  was  curiously  quick  to  seize  each  suggestion 
that  events  offered  him.  He  never  ran  before  Providence, 
and  never  lingered  behind  it.  And  his  nimble  intellect, 
while  he  worked,  glanced  through  all  history,  his  wide 
knowledge  discovering  everywhere  helps,  analogies,  guides. 
When,  for  example,  the  most  characteristic  of  all  Meth- 
odist institutions,  the  class-meeting,  suddenly  emerged,  as 
if  by  happy  accident,  Wesley  recognised  its  values  and 
possibilities  ;  but  he  recognised,  too,  the  historical  analogies 
of  the  institution.  It  was  not  merely,  in  Wesley's  words, 
"  the  very  thing "  the  Church  at  that  moment  wanted ; 
it  was  the  re-emergence  in  modern  form  of  the  fellowship 
the  apostolic '.Church  once  possessed. 

Who  studies,  in  a  word,  Wesley's  genius,  training,  and 
beliefs  will  cease  to  wonder  that,  in  a  period  so  brief,  and 
apparently  with  no  sense  of  the  greatness  of  the  work 
he  was  doing,  he  determined,  and  determined  for  all  time, 
the  essential  characteristics  of  the  great  Church  that  bears 
his  name. 

For  the  equipment  of  a   Church,  to   sum   up  briefly, 


WESLEY    AS    A   CHURCH-BUILDER  309 

great  forces  must  be  enlisted,  great  plans  formed.  Meth- 
odism looked  at  as  a  Church  in  process  of  evolution  needed 
a  theology,  a  philosophy,  a  discipline  ;  and  Wesley,  with- 
out formally  proposing  these  special  tasks  for  himself,  had 
undertaken  them.  He  found  his  theology  in  the  Bible,  his 
philosophy  in  the  correspondence  of  its  truths  to  human 
character,  and  his  discipline  in  the  application  of  common- 
sense  to  the  actual  facts  of  the  moment.  Herbert  Spencer 
has  defined  science  as  "  organised  knowledge " ;  and  a 
Church,  as  Wesley  saw  it  and  planned  it,  might  be  defined 
as  organised  religion. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  BREACH  WITH  THE  MORAVIANS 

THE  first  equipment  of  a  Church  is  its  theology.  It  stands 
for  some  one  special  reading  of  Christianity,  and  its 
theology,  by  its  accent  and  perspective,  expresses  that 
reading.  And  it  may  be  said,  generally,  that  the  difference 
betwixt  the  theologies  of  the  various  Christian  Churches 
is  mainly  one  of  accent,  and  of  angle  of  vision.  Now  the 
theology  of  the  Methodist  Church  was  decisively  shaped 
by  three  great  controversies  which  belong  to  its  early 
years.  Who  studies  the  history  of  Wesley's  work  will 
see  that  on  its  very  threshold  lay  the  certainty  of  these 
controversies. 

Wesley  was  a  devoted  son  of  the  Anglican  Church, 
ordained  to  its  ministry,  a  convinced  believer  of  its 
doctrines,  a  passionate  lover  of  its  ritual.  But  he  owed 
his  spiritual  life  to  the  Moravians.  Whitefield  was  his 
closest  comrade,  and  in  some  fields  of  work  his  leader. 
And  in  each  of  these  relationships  was  hidden  a  latent 
and  profound  discord  sure  to  register  itself  in  open  con- 
troversy. 

By  the  necessity  of  its  genius,  and  by  the  stamp  of 
Wesley's  strong  character  put  upon  it,  Methodism,  it  was 
certain,  must  be  English,  and  not  German,  in  type.  It 
could  not  be  a  Church  of  mystics  and  dreamers.  The 
pulse  of  an  energetic  and  practical  morality  beat  in  its 
very  blood.  Sooner  or  later,  therefore,  it  must  break 
with  Moravianism,  with  its  dreamy  quietism,  its  mysticism, 
shading  off  into  the  deadliest  form  of  Antinomianism. 

Whitefield,  again,  was  a  satisfied  and  even  an  exultant 
Calvinist.  The  doctrine  that  Christ  did  not  die  for  all 
men  was,  in  his  own  words,  "  the  children's  bread  " ;  he 
would  not  give  it  to  the  dogs.  But  Wesley  was  a  reasoned 
and  convinced  Arminian.  His  theology  at  this  point  had 
been  settled  by  his  mother's  homely  sense  and  spiritual 


310 


THE  BREACH  WITH  THE  MORAVIANS    311 

insight.  That  all  men  were  included  in  the  great  sweep 
of  God's  fatherly  love  and  of  Christ's  redeeming  purpose 
was  for  him  the  first  of  certainties.  He  had  no  gospel 
for  himself,  or  for  anybody  else,  if  this  was  not  true. 
Was  Methodism  to  be  Calvinistic  or  Arminian  in  its 
theology?  This  great  issue  had  to  be  determined,  and 
the  discord  betwixt  the  two  great  comrades  on  this  point 
made  a  far-reaching  controversy  inevitable. 

Then  the  Anglican  Church  of  that  day  had  forgotten 
the  spiritual  elements  of  Christianity.  It  put  form  before 
fact.  It  resolved  religion  into  a  scheme  of  human  ethics 
that  had  no  divine  force  behind  it,  or  in  it.  It  was 
content  to  be  the  Church  of  a  comfortable  and  tiny 
minority.  Its  clergy  cared  much  for  the  few  sheep 
within  the  episcopal  fold,  and  much,  too,  for  the  wool 
on  their  backs ;  but  they  had  ceased  to  even  remember 
the  sheep  in  the  wilderness.  All  the  divinest  elements 
of  Christianity — its  passion  of  pity  for  the  lost,  and  its 
exultant  faith  in  the  supernatural — had  perished.  How 
were  such  great  opposites  to  be  reconciled  ?  How  could 
the  new  and  strong  wine  of  Methodism  be  retained  in 
a  wineskin  so  dry  and  ragged  ? 

Was  Methodism,  in  a  word,  to  be  German  or  English 
in  type;  Arminian  or  Calvinistic  in  theology;  a  mere 
scheme  of  decorous  moralities  or  a  living  religion,  with 
the  pulse  of  a  supernatural  life  beating  passionately  in 
it  ?  Controversy  was  inevitable  at  each  of  these  points. 
The  dispute  witn  the  Moravians  was  the  struggle  between 
a  religion  that  expressed  itself  in  an  energetic  morality 
and  a  religion  drowsed  with  more,  and  worse,  than  the 
fumes  of  poppies.  The  long  debate  with  Whitefield  was 
a  conflict  between  two  irreconcilable  readings  of  Christ's 
Gospel.  The  controversy  with  the  Anglican  Church  was 
the  quarrel  of  fire  with  ice.  It  meant  the  affirmation 
that  spiritual  fact  is  more  than  ecclesiastical  form,  that 
religion  is  not  a  mere  form  of  social  police,  a  system  of 
what  may  be  called  Chinese  moralities.  It  was  a  battle 
for  the  spiritual  reading  of  Christianity. 

Now  Wesley  himself  took  short  views.  He  was  content 
to  do  each  day's  work  within  the  day,  and  never  troubled 
himself  with  the  problems  of  to-morrow.  He  perhaps 
had  no  clear  vision  of  the  fundamental  discords  which 


312  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

lay  hidden  in  his  relations  with  those  about  him,  nor  of 
the  theology  waiting  to  be  shaped  by  controversy.  So 
he  stood,  all  unconscious,  on  the  verge  of  inevitable  dis- 
putes; disputes  with  the  Church  of  his  infancy,  with 
the  guides  who  had  led  him  to  Christ,  with  his  own 
closest  comrade  in  the  work  he  was  doing.  These  con- 
troversies, it  will  be  seen,  determined  for  Methodism  the 
temper  of  its  morality,  the  colour  of  its  theology,  the  form 
of  its  Church  order. 

In  October  1739,  Philip  Henry  Molther,  a  Moravian 
minister,  came  to  London  on  his  way  to  Pennsylvania.  He 
was  a  man  of  many  gifts  and  of  intense — if  narrow — piety ; 
and  the  Society  in  Fetter  Lane — the  common  centre  of 
the  new  spiritual  movement  —  at  once  fell  under  his 
influence.  He  remained  in  London  till  the  following 
September,  and  during  these  few  brief  months  Methodism 
and  Moravianisin  were  rent  asunder  for  ever. 

There  was  a  deep  mystic  strain  in  Molther's  genius. 
His  vision  of  evangelical  truth  was  intense  but  narrow, 
and  even  distorted.  Truth  is  often  of  a  scale  too  large 
for  the  tiny  curve  of  human  vision ;  and  in  partial  truth 
there  is  deadly  peril.  Heresy  itself  is  often  truth  only 
half  seen,  or  seen  in  distorted  perspective.  Molther's 
errors  represent  only  a  want  of  equipoise  in  his  theology ; 
but  their  practical  results  were  gross,  and  even  deadly. 
Christ,  he  taught,  was  for  a  believer  everything ;  "all 
beside  was  nothing."  And  in  the  catalogue  of  things 
dismissed  as  "  nothing  " — as  irrelevant,  or  even  evil — were 
the  ordinary  duties  ol  Christian  morality  and  the  simplest 
acts  of  Christian  worship.  Molther  taught  that  there 
were  no  degrees  in  faith.  Who  had  not  perfect  faith 
had  none  at  all.  The  single  duty  of  a  man  wanting  faith 
was  "to  be  still,"  and  do  nothing.  The  very  means  of 
grace  to  him  were  hindrances — not  to  say  sins.  "An 
unbeliever,  or  one  who  has  not  a  clean  heart,  ought  not 
to  use  them  at  all;  ought  not  to  pray,  or  search  the 
Scriptures,  or  communicate,  but  to  '  be  still ' ;  and  then 
he  will  surely  receive  faith,  which,  till  he  is  still,  he 
cannot  have." l 

In  the  "  stillness "  in  which  an  unbeliever  was  to  wait 
the  entrance  of  Christ  into  his  soul  he  was  not  to  go  to 

1  Journal,  June  22,  1740. 


THE  BREACH  WITH  THE  MORAVIANS    313 

church,  not  to  read  the  Scriptures,  not  to  use  private 
prayer,  not  to  do  temporal  good,  not  to  attempt  to  do 
spiritual  good.  The  soul,  in  a  word,  was  to  dwell  in  a 
spiritual  and  self-manufactured  vacuum  till  Christ  came 
to  it. 

All  Christian  ordinances,  on  this  theory,  lost  their 
obligation  and  even  their  utility.  Those  who  were 
without  faith  must  not  use  them ;  those  who  had  faith 
need  not.  To  those  outside  the  spiritual  household 
they  were  hindrances,  to  those  inside  they  were  im- 
pertinences. 

This  is  plainly  a  doctrine  in  quarrel  alike  with  common- 
sense  and  with  the  elementary  laws  of  morality.  As  held 
by  Molther  himself,  and  the  group  of  fellow-mystics  at 
that  moment  about  him,  it  might  not  produce  any  failure 
in  practical  morality ;  but  when  filtered  through  minds  of 
coarser  fibre — and  bodies  of  stronger  appetites — the  moral 
risks  of  such  teaching  were  inevitable  and  tremendous. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Molther' s  teaching  produced  instant 
and  visible  mischief.  It  disturbed  the  peace  of  the 
Societies.  Charles  Wesley  describes  the  effect  on  those 
who  accepted  the  new  theology :  "  Lazy  and  proud  in 
themselves,  bitter  and  censorious  towards  others,  they 
trample  on  the  ordinances  and  despise  the  commands 
of  Christ." 

Wesley  hastened  back  from  Bristol  to  check  the  course 
of  this  evil.  He  found  the  Society  full  of  strife  and  con- 
fusion— its  perplexed  members  driven,  many  of  them,  to 
their  wits'  end.  "  I  was,"  he  says,  "  utterly  at  a  loss  what 
course  to  take,  finding  no  rest  for  the  sole  of  my  foot. 
These  vain  j anglings  pursued  me  wherever  I  went,  and 
were  always  sounding  in  my  ears.'  He  describes  in  his 
Journal  the  evil  change  Molther  and  his  teachings  had 
already  wrought  on  the  meetings  at  Fetter  Lane.  "  Our 
Society,"  he  says,  "met  at  seven  in  the  morning  and 
continued  silent  till  eight."  "At  eight,"  he  records  on 
another  occasion,  "  our  Society  met  at  Fetter  Lane.  We 
sat  an  hour  without  speaking,  the  rest  of  the  time  was 
spent  in  dispute."  He  writes  again :  "  In  the  evening 
our  Society  met,  but  cold,  weary,  heartless,  dead.  I 
found  nothing  of  brotherly  love  amongst  them  now,  but 
a  harsh,  dry,  heavy,  stupid  spirit.  For  two  hours  they 


314  WESLEY   AND    HIS   CENTURY 

looked  at  one  another  when  they  looked  up  at  all,  as  if 
one-half  of  them  were  afraid  of  the  other." 

It  is  almost  amusing  to  notice  how  Wesley  resented 
being  called  down  from  the  high  levels  of  spiritual  service 
in  which  he  was  walking,  to  this  sad  controversy.  And 
the  Moravian  heresy  shocked  his  common-sense  by  its 
pretence  of  superfine  spirituality.  It  soared  in  realms  too 
high  for  him.  He  writes  in  his  Journal : — 

"  My  soul  is  sick  of  this  sublime  divinity.  Let  me  think  and 
speak  as  a  little  child  !  Let  my  religion  be  plain,  artless,  simple  ! 
Meekness,  Temperance,  patience,  faith,  and  love,  be  these  my 
highest  gifts  :  and  let  the  highest  words  wherein  I  teach  them  be 
those  I  learn  from  the  Book  of  God ! " 

With  characteristic  frankness  Wesley  proceeded  to  dis- 
cuss Molther's  teaching  with  Molther  himself.  He  trans- 
lated his  vague  and  misty  ideas  into  plain  English,  with 
the  hope  of  shocking  both  Molther  and  his  followers 
by  their  nature,  but  in  vain.  Wesley's  account  of  the 
interview  is  amusing.  "  I  weighed  all  his  words,"  he  says, 
"  with  the  utmost  care,  desiring  him  to  explain  what  I 
did  not  understand.  I  asked  him  again  and  again,  '  Do  I 
not  mistake  what  you  say  ?  Is  this  your  meaning  or  is  it 
not  ? '  So  that  I  think  if  God  has  given  me  any  measure 
of  understanding  I  could  not  mistake  him  much."  At 
the  close  of  the  interview  Wesley  wrote  down  what  had 
passed  in  the  plainest  words,  but  the  whole  process  was 
like  trying  to  persuade  a  ghost  to  become  solid  flesh  and 
blood. 

Wesley  preached  to  the  members  every  night  for  a 
week,  but  nis  hearers  were  in  a  mood  in  which  reason 
has  no  office  and  controversy  only  hardens.  He  was  told 
bluntly  that  he  was  "preaching  up  the  works  of  the 
law,  which,  as  believers,  they  were  no  more  bound  to  obey 
than  the  subjects  of  England  were  bound  to  obey  the 
laws  of  France.  One  of  them  said,  when  publicly  ex- 
pounding Scripture,  that  as  many  went  to  hell  by  praying 
as  by  thieving.  Another  said, '  You  have  lost  your  first 
joy ;  therefore  you  pray ;  that  is  the  Devil.  You  read  the 
Bible ;  that  is  the  Devil.  You  communicate ;  that  is  the 
Devil.'" 


THE   BREACH   WITH   THE    MORAVIANS          315 

Finally,  Wesley  brought  the  matter  to  an  issue.  The 
spurious  treatise  of  JJionysius  the  Areopagite  was  a 
favourite  book  amongst  the  Moravians.  It  is  full — as 
Wesley  himself  says — of  "super-essential  darkness,"  a 
mere  weltering  chaos  of  mystic  nonsense.  Wesley  took  it 
to  the  Society  on  the  night  of  July  16,  1740,  and  read 
some  deadly  extracts  from  it.  Here  is  the  passage  from 
it  on  which  he  challenged  the  little  gathering : — 

"The  Scriptures  are  good;  prayer  is  good;  communicating  is 
good ;  relieving  our  neighbours  is  good ;  but  to  one  who  is  not 
born  of  God,  none  of  these  is  good,  but  all  very  evil.  For  him  to 
read  the  Scriptures,  or  to  pray,  or  to  communicate,  or  to  do  any 
outward  work,  is  deadly  poison.  First  let  him  be  born  of  God. 
Till  then  let  him  not  do  any  of  these  things.  For  if  he  does,  he 
destroys  himself." 

" '  After  reading  this  twice  or  thrice  over,  as  distinctly  as  I 
could,'  he  says,  '  I  asked,  "  My  brethren,  is  this  right,  or  is  it 
wrong  ? "  Mr.  Bell  answered  immediately  : 

" '  It  is  right ;  it  is  all  right.  It  is  the  truth.  To  this  we 
must  all  come,  or  we  never  can  come  to  Christ.' 

"  '  Mr.  Bray  said,  "  I  believe  our  brother  Bell  did  not  hear  what 
you  read,  or  did  not  rightly  understand." 

" '  But  Mr.  Bell  replied  short,  "  Yes,  I  heard  every  word,  and  I 
understand  it  well.  I  say,  it  is  the  truth ;  it  is  the  very  truth ; 
it  is  the  inward  truth." ' 

Matters,  upon  this,  came  quickly  to  a  crisis,  for  this  was 
a  doctrine  which  both  shocked  Wesley's  conscience  and 
affronted  his  common-sense.  Wesley  himself  was  no 
longer  allowed  to  preach  in  Fetter  Lane.  "  This  place,"  he 
was  told,  "is  taken  for  the  Germans."  He  had  already 
obtained  possession  of  the  Foundry — a  large,  disused 
workshop  in  Moorfields — and  had  begun  to  hold  services 
there.  If  driven  from  Fetter  Lane,  he  had  thus  a  new 
centre.  On  Sunday  night,  July  20,  Wesley  went  to  the 
Love-feast  in  Fetter  Lane,  and  read  a  short  paper  in 
which  he  recited  the  reasons  and  the  history  of  the  dis- 
pute. The  paper  ended : — 

"You  have  often  affirmed  that  to  search  the  Scriptures,  to  pray, 
or  to  communicate,  before  we  have  this  faith,  is  to  seek  salvation 
by  works ;  and  that  till  these  works  are  laid  aside,  no  man  can 
receive  faith. 


316  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

"  I  believe  these  assertions  to  be  flatly  contrary  to  the  Word  of 
God.  I  have  warned  you  hereof  again  and  again,  and  besought 
you  to  turn  back  to  the  '  law  and  the  testimony.'  I  have  borne 
with  you  long,  hoping  you  would  turn.  But  as  I  find  you  more 
and  more  confirmed  in  the  error  of  your  ways,  nothing  now 
remains — but  that  I  should  give  you  up  to  God.  You  that  are 
of  the  same  judgment,  follow  me."  1 

"  I  then,"  says  Wesley,  "  without  saying  anything  more, 
withdrew,  as  did  eighteen  or  nineteen  of  the  society." 

According  to  the  Moravians  themselves,  the  dramatic 
effect  of  Wesley's  departure  from  the  building  was  spoilt 
by  a  petty  but  ingenious  trick.  As  the  persons  present 
came  into  the  room  they  placed  their  hats  all  together 
on  the  ground  in  one  corner;  but  Wesley's  hat  had 
been — by  design — carried  off.  When  he  had  finished 
his  paper  and  called  upon  all  who  agreed  with  him  to 
follow  him,  he  walked  across  the  room,  but  could  not 
discover  his  hat !  The  pause,  the  search  which  followed, 
quite  effaced  the  impressiveness  of  his  departure,  and, 
as  Southey  puts  it,  "the  wily  Molther  and  his  followers 
had  time  to  arrest  many  who  would  have  been  carried 
away  in  his  wake." 

Zinzendorf  sent  another  and  wiser  representative, 
Spangenberg,  to  confer  with  Wesley,  and  act  as  mediator 
between  the  divided  parties.  Spangenberg  decided  that 
Molther  and  his  followers  were  wrong,  and  had  treated 
Wesley  ill;  but  this  did  not  end  the  controversy.  Peter 
Bohler,  in  turn,  was  sent  to  London  to  put  matters  right. 
He  was  a  man  to  be  trusted,  and  Wesley's  personal  debt 
to  him,  it  was  calculated,  would  outweigh  all  other 
considerations.  And  much  of  the  charm  of  Bohler  and 
of  his  influence  over  Wesley  still  survived.  After  an 
interview  with  him  Wesley  wrote,  "I  marvel  how  I 
refrain  from  joining  these  men.  I  scarce  ever  see  any 
of  them  but  my  heart  burns  within  me.  I  long  to  be 
with  them,  and  yet  I  am  kept  from  them." 

But  where  practical  morality  was,  no  matter  how 
remotely,  concerned  Wesley  was  inexorable,  and  at 
bottom  Moravian  doctrine,  as  Molther  had  poisoned  it, 
and  as  it  was  now  fermenting  amongst  Wesley's  societies, 

1  Journal,  June  20,  1740. 


THE    BREACH    WITH   THE    MORAVIANS          317 

was  a  quarrel  with  morality.  Wesley  wrote  to  his  brother 
Samuel,  whose  obstinate  good  sense,  in  spite  of  wide 
theological  differences,  weighed  heavily  with  his  younger 
brother : — 

"As  yet  I  dare  in  no  wise  join  with  the  Moravians;  because 
their  general  scheme  is  mystical,  not  Scriptural,  refined  in  every 
point  above  what  is  written,  immeasurably  beyond  the  plain 
Gospel ;  because  there  is  darkness  and  closeness  in  all  their 
behaviour,  and  guile  in  almost  all  their  words;  because  they 
not  only  do  not  practise,  but  utterly  despise  and  decry  self-denial 
and  the  daily  cross.  For  these  reasons  chiefly  I  will  rather,  God 
being  my  Helper,  stand  quite  alone  than  join  with  them." 

Finally  Zinzendorf  himself  came  to  England.  The 
question  whether  Moravianism  was  to  take  root  on 
English  soil  was  at  issue,  and  Zinzendorf  was  anxious. 
Wesley  and  he  held  a  memorable  conversation  —  not 
under  any  roof,  but  in  Gray's  Inn  Walk — at  that  time 
a  little  patch  of  faded  verdure  set  amid  the  dust  and 
roar  of  London  streets. 

They  walked  to  and  fro — a  strange  pair,  the  stately 
German  noble  and  the  prim  little  Anglican  divine.  The 
conversation  was  in  Latin,  and  is  recorded  in  Latin  in 
Wesley's  Journal.  "  Why,"  began  Zinzendorf,  "  have 
you  changed  your  religion  ? "  Wesley,  of  course,  denied 
the  charge.  The  conversation  wandered  through  the 
whole  realm  of  theology;  but  the  difference  betwixt  the 
two  men  was  fundamental : — 

" '  You  have  affirmed,'  said  Zinzendorf,  '  in  your  epistle,  that 
they  who  are  true  Christians  are  not  miserable  sinners ;  and  this 
is  most  false  :  for  the  best  of  men  are  most  miserable  sinners, 
even  till  death.  They  who  teach  otherwise  are  either  absolute 
impostors,  or  they  are  under  a  diabolical  delusion.'  '  What  is 
Christian  perfection  ? '  he  demanded  again.  '  It  is  imputed — 
not  inherent.  We  are  never  perfect  in  ourselves.'  Then  he 
went  on  :  '  We  reject  all  self-denial ;  we  trample  on  it.  In 
faith  we  do  whatever  we  desire,  and  nothing  more.  We  laugh 
at  all  mortification;  no  purification  precedes  perfect  love.'"1 

These  were,  in  Wesley's  ears,  words  rash,  extravagant, 
perilous !  The  conversation  left  the  breach  as  wide  as 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  220. 


318  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

ever,  and  later  Wesley  in  a  powerful  letter  formulates  and 
puts  on  record  the  fundamental  differences  which  parted 
Methodism  and  Moravianism,  and  must  always  keep 
them  asunder.  Zinzendorf  responded  by  publishing  an 
advertisement  in  the  newspapers  declaring  that  he  and 
his  people  had  no  connection  with  John  and  Charles 
Wesley.  Thus  came  to  an  end  a  goodlier  fellowship 
than  that  of  King  Arthur  and  the  Knights  of  the 
Round  Table. 

Many  curious  and  even  absurd  explanations  of  this 
breach  are  offered  by  the  historians  and  critics  of 
Methodism.  Southey  blames  Wesley's  ambition  for 
the  controversy.  "  John  Wesley,"  he  says,  "  could  never 
have  been  more  than  a  member  of  the  Moravian  Church ; 
the  first  place  was  occupied,  and  he  was  not  born  to 
hold  a  secondary  place."  Coleridge  says  the  true  reason 
of  the  dispute  is  to  be  found  in  the  diversity  of  the 
German  and  English  genius.  Elsewhere  he  says  that 
Zinzendorf  was  a  metaphysician  without  logic,  and 
Wesley  a  logician  without  metaphysics:  hence  their 
hopeless  quarrel.  Later  still — and  with  true  Coleridgean 
inconsistency — he  finds  the  blackest  wickedness  in  Wes- 
ley's spirit  throughout  the  whole  transaction,  and  falls 
foul  of  his  friend  Southey  for  dealing  with  Wesley  too 
lightly:— 

"  Robert  Southey  (he  says)  is  an  historian  worth  his  weight 
in  diamonds,  and  were  he  (which  heaven  forfend)  as  fat  as  myself, 
and  the  diamonds  all  as  big  as  bird's  eggs,  I  should  still  repeat 
the  appraisal.  .  .  .  But  here,  I  am  vexed  with  him  for  not  em- 
ploying stronger  and  more  impassioned  words  of  reprobation,  and 
moral  recoil  in  this  black  blotch  of  Wesley's  heart  and  character." 

But  the  cause  of  the  dispute  lies  deeper  than  any 
mere  difference  between  English  and  German  genius, 
or  in  the  mental  characteristics  of  Zinzendorf  and  of 
Wesley.  Molther's  teaching,  in  fact,  was  an  aberration 
from  Moravian  doctrine;  it  declared,  in  the  last  analysis, 
that  religion  had  nothing  to  do  with  morality.  Surely 
a  strange  and  dreadful  doctrine  ! 

Half-truths  are  often  whole  heresies;  and  Molther 
was  led  astray  because  he  saw  truth  only  in  fragments, 
or  in  false  perspective.  Christianity,  in  a  sense,  changes 


THE  BREACH  WITH  THE  MORAVIANS     319 

the  ethical  order.  It  gives  to  obedience  a  new  place, 
and  equips  it  with  new  motives.  A  forgiven  soul  obeys 
because  it  is  forgiven,  and  under  the  motives  which 
forgiveness  creates.  But  Molther  was  so  eager  to  affirm 
that  we  do  not  purchase  our  forgiveness  by  our  obedience, 
that  he  forgot  to  assert  that  we  obey,  and  must  obey, 
under  the  inspiration  of  forgiveness. 

The  mischief  of  Molther's  doctrine  was  immediate  and 
long-enduring.  It  poisoned  the  teaching  of  not  a  few  of 
Wesley's  own  helpers.  It  taught  them  what  Wesley  calls 
"  a  luscious  style  of  preaching."  "  They  feed  their  people," 
he  says,  "  with  sweetmeats."  They  talked  much  of  the 
promises  and  little  of  the  commands.  "  What  are  vulgarly 
called  '  Gospel  sermons/  "  he  says  again,  "  has  now  become 
a  mere  cant  word ;  I  wish  none  of  our  society  would  use 
it.  Let  but  a  pert,  self-sufficient  animal,  that  has  neither 
sense  or  grace,"  he  cries  with  angry  energy,  "bawl  out 
something  about  Christ  or  His  blood,  or  justification  by 
faith,  and  his  hearers  cry  out,  '  What  a  fine  Gospel  sermon.' 
Surely  the  Methodists  have  not  so  learned  Christ." 

The  taint  of  Antinomianism  in  such  teaching  produced 
— as  was  inevitable — some  dreadful  forms  of  immorality, 
of  which  the  notorious  case  of  Wheatley,  one  of  Wesley's 
helpers,  who  corrupted  a  whole  town,  is  an  example.  We 
have  only  to  remember  the  story  of  the  Brethren  and 
Sisters  of  the  Free  Spirit  in  the  fourteenth  century,  of 
the  Munster  Anabaptists  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  of 
the  New  Lights  in  England  in  Cromwell's  later  days,  to 
understand  the  peril  which  overhung  Wesley's  work  at 
this  stage. 

Wesley's  Journal  gives  many  examples  of  the  deadly 
mischief  wrought  amongst  his  converts.  Thus,  in  April 
1746,  at  Birmingham,  he  tells  how  one  "came  to  me,  and 
looking  over  his  shoulder,  said, '  Don't  think  I  want  to  be 
in  your  Society ;  but  if  you  are  free  to  speak  to  me,  you 
may.' "  After  some  conversation  Wesley  asked :  "  Do  you 
believe  you  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  law  of  God  ! " 

"'I  have  not,'  was  the  answer.  'I  am  not  under  the  law;  I 
live  by  faith.'  '  Have  you,  as  living  by  faith,  a  right  to  every- 
thing in  the  world  1 '  'I  have  :  all  is  mine,  since  Christ  is  mine.' 
'  May  you,  then,  take  anything  you  will,  anywhere,  suppose,  out 
of  a  shop,  without  the  consent  or  knowledge  of  the  owner ? '  'I 


320  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

may,  if  I  want  it;  for  it  is  mine;  only  I  will  not  give  offence. 
'  Have  you  also  a  right  to  all  the  women  in  the  world  1 '  '  Yes, 
if  they  consent.'  'And  is  that  not  a  sin?'  'Yes,  to  him  that 
thinks  it  is  a  sin ;  but  not  to  those  whose  hearts  are  free.'  '  The 
same  thing,'  comments  Wesley,  '  that  wretch,  Roger  Ball,  affirmed 
in  Dublin.  Surely  these  are  first-born  children  of  Satan.' " 

Seven  years  later  Wesley  records  a  conversation  he 
had,  again  at  Birmingham,  with  a  woman  who  had  fallen 
under  Moravian  influence : — 

"'I  never  pray,'  she  said,  'for  what  can  I  pray  for1?  I  have 
all.'  I  asked,  'Do  you  not  pray  for  sinners?'  She  said,  'No; 
I  know  no  sinners  but  one.  I  know  but  two  in  the  world :  God 
is  one  and  the  devil  is  the  other.'  I  asked,  '  Did  not  Adam  sin 
of  old;  and  do  not  adulterers  and  murderers  sin  now?'  She 
replied,  '  No,  Adam  never  sinned ;  and  no  man  sins  now ;  it  is 
only  the  devil.'  'And  will  no  man  ever  be  damned?'  'No 
man  ever  will.'  'Nor  the  devil1?'  'I  am  not  so  sure;  but  I 
believe  not.'  '  Do  you  receive  the  Sacrament  ? '  '  No,  I  do  not 
want  it.'  'Is  the  word  of  God  your  rule?'  'Yes;  the  word 
made  flesh,  but  not  the  letter.  I  am  in  the  spirit.' " 

"  Upon  inquiry,"  adds  Wesley,  "  I  found  these  wild 
enthusiasts  were  six  in  all — four  men  and  two  women. 
They  had  first  run  into  the  height  of  Antinomianism,  and 
then  were  given  up  to  the  spirit  of  pride  and  blasphemy." 

Three  years  later  still — so  long-enduring  are  the  forces 
of  evil — in  1755 — Wesley  records  in  his  Journal: — 

"  On  Friday,  April  4,  to  Birmingham,  a  barren,  dry,  uncomfort- 
able place.  Most  of  the  seed  which  had  been  sown  for  so  many 
years  the  '  wild  boars '  have  rooted  up  ;  the  fierce,  unclean,  brutish 
blasphemous  Antinomians  have  utterly  destroyed  it.  And  the 
mystic  foxes  have  taken  true  pains  to  spoil  what  remained  with 
their  new  Gospel." 

All  this  shows  not  only  how  deadly,  but  how  obstinate, 
was  the  mischief  wrought  by  the  Moravian  lapse  into 
Antinomianism. 

Fletcher  wrote  his  famous  "  Checks "  to  arrest  the 
poisonous  taint  which  was  creeping  into  the  very  blood 
of  the  societies.  These  "Checks"  are  matchless  in  force 
of  logic  and  in  grace  of  literary  style ;  but  who  now  reads 
them  ?  They  are  forgotten !  But  this  is  only  because  the 


THE  BREACH  WITH  THE  MORAVIANS     321 

evil  which  made  them  necessary  has  practically  ceased 
to  exist.  The  blood  of  Christendom  has  been  purged 
of  the  Antinomian  strain,  and  the  universal  Christian 
conscience  has  arrayed  itself  on  Wesley's  side.  Wesley, 
indeed,  did  more  than  save  his  own  movement  from 
ruin  and  defeat  by  the  resolute  stand  he  took  at  this 
stage  of  his  work.  He  helped,  for  all  the  Churches,  and 
for  all  time,  to  avert  a  peril  which  threatened  Christian 
morality  itself.  And  how  different  might  have  been  the 
religious  history  of  England  if  the  great  revival  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  been  captured  by  the  mystics ;  if 
Zinzendorf  and  not  Wesley  had  determined  its  theology 
and  stamped  himself  upon  its  character ! 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   CONTROVERSY   WITH   WHITEFIELD 

WHITEFIELD,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a  convinced  and 
exultant  Calvinist.  He  believed  in  God's  love  passion- 
ately, but  he  found  it  possible  to  believe  that  this  love, 
high  beyond  all  dreams,  deep  beyond  all  sounding,  had 
yet  a  mysterious  and  tragical  narrowness.  It  was  cer- 
tainly narrower  than  the  human  race,  since  it  left  whole 
sections  of  that  race  in  the  outer  darkness  of  a  reprobation 
lit  with  no  gleams  of  mercy.  The  doctrine  that  God  did 
not  love  the  race,  and  that  Christ  had  not  died  for  all  men 
was,  even  in  Whitefield's  eyes,  "the  children's  bread," 
something  precious  and  nourishing.  To  cast  it  away,  to 
leave  it  unproclaimed,  was  to  rob  Christ's  household. 

To  Wesley,  on  the  other  hand,  that  doctrine  was  a 
denial  of  the  whole  Gospel.  It  left  him  without  a  mes- 
sage. There  was,  at  this  point,  betwixt  the  leaders  of  the 
great  revival  a  breach  of  doctrinal  belief  deep  and  im- 
passable. Wesley's  great  rule  in  all  theological  differences, 
however,  was  to  "Think  and  let  think."  He  had  no 
doctrinal  tests  for  his  societies,  and  he  certainly  would 
not  separate  from  a  great  and  loyal  comrade  like  White- 
field,  who  agreed  with  him  in  so  many  essential  beliefs, 
because,  at  one  point  of  metaphysical  divinity,  their 
theologies  differed. 

Yet  the  breach  in  doctrine  betwixt  the  two  men  was 
something  more  than  a  question  in  metaphysics.  It 
was  fundamental.  It  pierced  to  the  very  heart  of  their 
creed.  It  carried  with  it  far-reaching  moral  issues.  It 
must,  sooner  or  later,  cause  a  division  in  their  work.  The 
mere  impulse  of  the  controversialist,  the  natural  desire 
to  win  converts  and  to  refute  opponents,  made  either 
silence  or  peace  as  a  permanent  condition  impossible. 

The  rupture  came  from  Whitefield's  side.  He  was  no 
logician.  His  beliefs  and  his  feelings  were  kept  in  separate 

322 


THE   CONTROVERSY   WITH   WHITEFIELD        323 

compartments  ;  his  creed  was  a  mosaic  of  unrelated  frag- 
ments. Yet  there  are  signs  that  in  his  conscience  there 
was  an  unacknowledged  disquiet  with  his  own  theology. 
He  was  conscious,  too,  of  Wesley's  greater  intellectual 
strength  and  wider  range  of  scholarship ;  and  the  know- 
ledge that  the  man  who  was  his  natural  leader,  at  whose 
feet  he  had  sat  for  years,  differed  so  profoundly  from  him  at 
a  point  so  serious,  was  to  Whitefield  a  gnawing,  if  uncon- 
fessed,  disquiet.  He  could  not  leave  the  subject  betwixt 
them  alone.  He  writes  to  Wesley  begging  him  "  for  once 
to  hearken  to  a  child  who  is  willing  to  wash  your  feet "  : — 

"  The  doctrine  of  election,  and  the  final  perseverance  of  those 
who  are  in  Christ,  I  am  ten  thousand  times  more  convinced  of 
— if  possible — than  when  I  saw  you  last.  You  think  otherwise. 
Why,  then,  should  we  dispute  when  there  is  no  probability  of 
convincing  ?  " l 

But  Whitefield  himself  could  not  rest.  He  must  try 
to  convince  Wesley.  He  writes  to  him  from  America  :— 

"  The  more  I  examine  the  writings  of  the  most  experienced 
men  and  the  experiences  of  the  most  established  Christians  the 
more  I  differ  from  .  .  .  your  denying  the  doctrines  of  election  and 
the  final  perseverance  of  the  saints.  I  dread  coming  to  England 
unless  you  are  resolved  to  oppose  these  truths  with  less  warmth 
than  when  I  was  there  last.  I  dread  your  coming  over  to 
America,  because  the  work  of  God  is  carried  on  here  and  that 
in  a  most  glorious  manner  by  doctrines  quite  opposite  to  those 
you  hold.  God  direct  me  what  to  do.  Perhaps  I  may  never  see 
you  again  till  we  meet  in  judgment;  then,  if  not  before,  you  will 
know  that  sovereign,  distinguishing,  irresistible  grace  brought 
you  to  heaven." 

There  is  something  almost  amusing  in  the  brief,  com- 
posed, matter-of-fact  reply  Wesley  makes  to  Whitefield's 
agitated  appeals.  He  tries  to  cool  his  alarms  with  a  few 
drops  of  patient  ink  : — 

"  The  case  is  quite  plain.  There  are  bigots  both  for  predes- 
tination and  against  it.  God  is  sending  a  message  to  those  on 
either  side,  but  neither  will  receive  it  unless  from  one  who  is  of 
their  own  opinion.  Therefore  for  a  time  you  are  suffered  to  be 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  226. 


324  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

of  one  opinion,  and  I  of  another.  But  when  His  time  is  come, 
God  will  do  what  men  cannot — namely,  make  us  both  of  one 
mind."1 

Wesley's  large -mindedness  at  this  point  was,  on  his 
part,  both  genuine  and  habitual.  He  acted  upon  it  as  a 
steadfast  policy.  He  was  perfectly  willing  to  give  to  his 
own  followers  the  largest  liberty  of  disagreeing  with  him- 
self on  abstract  points,  so  that  in  the  realm  of  practical 
conduct  they  agreed. 

Smaller  controversialists  meanwhile  were  busy,  and  their 
zeal  was  quite  unflavoured  by  either  prudence  or  charity. 
A  leading  member  of  the  Society  in  London,  named  Acourt, 
insisted  on  turning  the  Society  into  a  debating  class  on 
the  subject  of  predestination,  until  Charles  Wesley,  in  the 
interest  of  quiet,  gave  orders  that  he  should  no  longer  be 
admitted.  John  Wesley  was  present,  as  it  happened,  when 
this  too  zealous  theologian  next  presented  himself,  and 
demanded  whether  he  was  to  be  expelled  because  he 
differed  from  them  only  in  opinion.  He  was  asked,  "  What 
opinion  ?  "  and  replied,  "  That  of  election.  I  hold  that  a 
certain  number  are  elected  from  eternity,  and  these  must 
and  shall  be  saved,  and  the  rest  of  mankind  must  and 
shall  be  damned."  And  he  affirmed  that  many  of  the 
Society  held  the  same ;  upon  which  Wesley  observed  that 
he  never  asked  whether  they  did  or  not ;  "  only  let  them 
not  trouble  others  by  disputing  about  it."  Acourt  replied, 
"Nay,  but  I  will  dispute  about  it."  "Why,  then,"  said 
Wesley,  "would  you  come  among  us,  whom  you  know 
are  of  another  mind  ? "  "  Because  you  are  all  wrong  and  I 
am  resolved  to  set  you  all  right."  "  I  fear,"  said  Wesley, 
"your  coming  with  this  view  would  neither  profit  you 
nor  us."  "  Then,"  rejoined  Acourt,  "I  will  go  and  tell  all 
the  world  that  you  and  your  brother  are  false  prophets." 

Whitefield,  on  his  part,  continued  to  exhort  Wesley  to 
a  silence,  in  his  public  discourses,  on  the  subject  about 
which  they  disagreed,  which  he  did  not  himself  observe. 
"For  Christ's  sake,"  he  writes,  "if  possible  never  speak 
against  election  in  your  sermons.  No  one  can  say  that  I 
ever  mentioned  it  in  public  discourse,  whatever  my  private 
sentiments  may  be."  And  yet,  at  the  same  time,  White- 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  227. 


THE    CONTROVERSY    WITH    WHITEFIELD         325 

field  records  in  his  journal  his  resolve  "to  henceforth 
speak  more  boldly  and  explicitly  as  I  ought  to  speak  on 
tnese  subjects."  His  memory,  it  is  clear,  betrayed  him 
when  writing  to  Wesley ! 

Meanwhile  the  compulsion  of  events  was  too  strong  for 
both  men.  Wesley  was  sharply  accused  by  a  correspon- 
dent of  "  not  preaching  the  Gospel " — the  "  Gospel "  being, 
according  to  this  particular  theologian,  the  doctrine  of 
election  and  nothing  else.  The  letter  somehow  moved 
even  Wesley's  composed  mind ;  and,  as  was  his  custom  in 
matters  of  difficulty,  he  "  sought  counsel  of  God  by  cast- 
ing lots."  This  yielded  the  message,  "  Preach  and  print." 
He  accordingly,  in  1739,  preached  and  printed  the  immor- 
tal sermon  on  Free  Grace,  the  third  discourse  he  ever 
published. 

That  sermon  is,  amongst  other  things,  a  revelation  of 
Wesley's  real  qualities  as  a  preacher.  His  other  printed 
sermons  are,  in  the  main,  so  many  theological  dry  bones ; 
dry  bones  upon  which  the  prophet's  breath  had  ceased  to 
blow.  They  are  the  petrified  remains  of  sermons.  They 
lack  living  tissue ;  there  is  in  them  no  throb  of  passion, 
no  breath  of  life.  But  in  this  sermon  we  have  Wesley  as 
a  living  preacher.  His  sentences  burn  with  fire.  There  is 
a  pulse  of  energy  in  the  very  syllables.  Logic  and  rhetoric 
have  opposite  and,  hi  many  respects,  incompatible  quali- 
ties. Logic  borrows  from  ice  its  crystalline  clearness  and 
its  coldness.  Rhetoric  takes  from  fire  its  heat  and  glow. 
But  in  this  sermon  Wesley  somehow  gives  his  logic  the 
rush  and  fire  of  eloquence,  or  rather  he  teaches  the  fiery 
haste  of  his  rhetoric  to  steal  from  logic  its  ordered  and 
close-linked  strength.  Lord  Liverpool,  on  whose  impassive 
figure  Pitt  and  Fox,  Burke  and  Sheridan,  had  expended 
all  their  matchless  eloquence  in  vain,  declared  that  parts 
of  Wesley's  sermon  on  "Free  Grace"  were  unsurpassed 
either  hi  ancient  or  modern  oratory.  Here  is  an  example 
of  its  fire : — 

"  It  [the  doctrine  of  reprobation]  represents  the  most  holy  God 
as  worse  than  the  devil,  as  both  more  false,  more  cruel  and  more 
unjust.  More  false  because  the  devil,  liar  as  he  is,  has  never 
said  '  He  willeth  all  men  to  be  saved.'  More  unjust  because  the 
devil,  if  he  would,  cannot  be  guilty  of  such  injustice  as  you  ascribe 


326  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

to  God  when  you  say  that  God  condemned  millions  of  souls  to 
everlasting  fire,  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his  angels,  for  con- 
tinuing in  sin  which  for  want  of  that  grace  which  He  will  not 
give  them  they  cannot  avoid.  And  more  cruel  because  that 
unhappy  spirit  seeketh  rest  and  findeth  none,  so  that  his  own 
restless  misery  is  a  kind  of  temptation  tto  him  to  tempt  others. 
But  God  resteth  in  His  high  and  holy  place,  so  that  to  suppose 
Him  of  His  own  mere  motion,  of  His  pure  will  and  pleasure, 
happy  as  He  is,  to  doom  His  creatures  whether  they  will  or  no  to 
endless  misery,  is  to  impute  such  cruelty  to  Him  as  we  cannot 
impute  even  to  the  great  enemy  of  God  and  man.  It  is  to 
represent  the  most  High  God  (he  that  hath  ears  to  hear  let  him 
hear)  as  more  cruel,  false,  and  unjust  than  the  devil.  Here  I  fix 
my  foot.  You  represent  God  as  worse  than  the  devil. 

"  But  you  say  '  you  will  prove  it  by  Scripture.'  Hold  !  What ! 
Will  you  prove  by  Scripture  that  God  is  worse  than  the  devil? 
It  cannot  be.  Whatever  that  Scripture  proves,  it  can  never  prove 
this ;  whatever  its  true  meaning  be,  this  cannot  be  its  true 
meaning.  Do  you  ask,  '  What  is  its  true  meaning  then  ? '  If  I 
say  I  know  not  you  have  gained  nothing ;  for  there  are  many 
Scriptures  the  true  sense  whereof  neither  you  nor  I  shall  know 
till  death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory.  But  this  I  know,  better  it 
were  to  say  it  had  no  sense  at  all  than  to  say  that  it  had  such  a 
sense  as  this.  It  cannot  mean,  whatever  it  mean  besides,  that 
the  God  of  truth  is  a  liar.  Let  it  mean  what  it  will,  it  cannot 
mean  that  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  is  unjust." 

Whitefield,  by  this  time,  had  grown  more  sharply 
admonitory.  "  Give  me  leave,"  he  says,  "  with  all  humility 
to  exhort  you  not  to  be  strenuous  in  opposing  the  doc- 
trines of  election  and  final  perseverance,  when  by  your 
own  confession  you  have  not  the  witness  of  the  Spirit 
within  yourself,  and  consequently  are  not  a  proper  judge. 
I  am  assured  God  has  now  for  some  years  given  me  this 
living  witness  in  my  soul." l 

Whitefield  finds  in  the  very  fact  that  Wesley  does  not 
fill  his  letters  with  arguments  about  election,  a  darkly 
suspicious  circumstance.  "  I  wish,"  he  writes,  "  I  knew 
your  principles  fully.  Did  you  write  oftener  and  more 
frankly,  it  might  have  a  better  effect  than  silence  and 
reserve." 

A  controversialist  in  distress  for  arguments  is  apt  to 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  228. 


THE    CONTROVERSY    WITH    WHITEFIELD        327 

take  refuge  in  moral  admonitions  addressed  to  his  oppo- 
nent, as  to  the  quality  of  his  motives  and  conduct;  and 
Whitefield  about  this  time  discovers  that  Wesley's  bad 
theology  has  a  root  in  the  mournfully  defective  moral 
condition  of  Wesley  himself.  "  My  dear  brother,"  he 
writes,  "  take  heed.  Beware  of  a  false  peace.  .  .  .  Re- 
member you  are  but  a  babe  in  Christ,  if  so  much.  Be 
humble.  Talk  little.  Think  and  pray  much.  ...  If  you 
must  dispute,  stay  till  you  are  a  master  of  the  subject." 

"  Meanwhile,  you  will  not  own  election,"  he  complains 
again,  "  because  you  cannot  own  it  without  believing  the 
doctrine  of  reprobation.  What  then,"  he  asks  indignantly, 
"  is  there  in  reprobation  so  horrid  ? "  Southey,  who  as  a 
general  rule  sides  with  Whitefield  against  Wesley,  here  is 
compelled  to  answer  Whitefield's  question : — 

"  '  The  doctrine,'  he  says, '  implies  that  an  Almighty  and  Allwise 
Creator  has  called  into  existence  the  greater  part  of  the  human  race 
to  the  end  that,  after  a  short,  sinful,  and  miserable  life,  they  should 
pass  into  an  eternity  of  inconceivable  torments,  it  being  the 
pleasure  of  their  Creator  that  they  should  not  be  able  to  obey  His 
commands,  and  yet  incur  the  penalty  of  everlasting  damnation  for 
disobedience.'  "  l 

Events  were  now  moving  fast.  A  discord  in  belief  so 
acute  was  certain  to  register  itself  in  outward  form. 
Wesley  strove  manfully,  first,  to  escape  debate,  or  if  this 
was  not  possible,  to  carry  it  on  in  a  generous  temper ;  but 
Whitefield,  for  a  moment,  at  least,  fell  to  lower  levels.  He 
printed  and  privately  circulated  a  bitter  letter  against 
Wesley,  in  which  he  ridiculed  Wesley's  habit  of  casting 
lots  to  settle  difficult  questions,  and  gave  instances  of  a 
very  private  and  confidential  kind.  The  letter  was  printed 
by  some  of  Whitetield's  adherents,  and  copies  distributed  at 
the  door  of  the  Foundry.  A  copy  was  handed  to  Wesley. 
It  was  obviously  a  private  letter.  Wesley  held  it  up,  saying, 
"  I  will  do  just  what  I  believe  Mr.  Whitefield  would  were  he 
here  himself,"  and  he  tore  it  to  pieces  ;  and  every  person 
in  the  congregation  followed  his  example ! 

But  Wesley  and  Whitefield,  of  course,  had  followers  more 
vehement — more  jealous  for  victory,  and  less  careful  for 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  230. 


328  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

peace — than  themselves.  At  Kingswood,  John  Cennick 
one  of  Wesley's  earliest  converts,  was  employed  as  a 
teacher,  and  was  greatly  trusted  by  him.  He  was  a  Cal- 
vinist  of  an  almost  more  aggressive  type  than  White- 
field  himself,  and  the  Arminianism  of  the  two  Wesleys 
kindled  in  him  a  mood  of  brooding  and  angry  mistrust. 
He  wrote  to  Whitefield,  then  in  America,  calling  upon 
him  to  hasten  to  England. 

"  '  I  sit,'  he  said,  '  solitary,  like  Eli,  waiting  what  will  become  of 
the  ark.  .  .  .  How  gloriously  the  Gospel  seemed  once  to  flourish 
in  Kingswood  !  I  spake  of  the  everlasting  love  of  Christ  with 
sweet  power.  Yet,  now  brother  Charles  is  suffered  to  open  his 
mouth  against  this  truth,  while  the  frightened  sheep  gaze  in  reply. 
.  .  .  With  universal  redemption  brother  Charles  pleases  the  world  ; 
brother  John  follows  him  in  everything.  I  believe  no  atheist  can 
more  preach  against  predestination  than  they.  .  .  .  Fly,  dear 
brother !  I  am  in  the  midst  of  the  plague.  If  God  gives  thee 
leave,  make  haste.' " 

Humour  has  a  wholesome  office  even  in  theology,  and  a 
lively  sense  of  it  would  have  saved  the  Church  from  many 
disputes  and  not  a  few  heresies.  An  atheist  preaching 
against  predestination  is  a  sufficiently  non-humorous 
conception;  and  when  John  Cennick  saw  in  "brother 
Charles  "  nothing  but  this  dreadful  apparition,  it  is  a  sign 
that  he  had  temporarily  lost  all  salt  of  humour. 

The  letter  fell  into  Wesley's  hands.  He  had  the  in- 
stinct of  a  born  leader  of  men  for  discipline.  This  was 
not  a  question  of  liberty,  but  of  loyalty.  Could  he  see  his 
teaching  attacked  by  one  of  his  own  teachers,  and  under 
the  roof  of  his  own  school  ?  Charles  Wesley  put  the  case 
with  irresistible  force  to  Cennick  himself : — 

"  You  came  to  Kingswood  upon  my  brother's  sending  for  you. 
You  served  under  him  in  the  Gospel  as  a  son.  I  need  not  to  say 
how  well  he  loved  you.  You  used  the  authority  he  gave  you  to 
overthrow  his  doctrine.  You  everywhere  contradicted  it  (whether 
true  or  false,  is  not  the  question).  But  you  ought  first  to  have 
fairly  told  him,  '  I  preach  contrary  to  you.  Are  you  willing,  not- 
withstanding, that  I  should  continue  in  your  house,  gainsaying 
you  1  If  you  are  not,  I  have  no  place  in  these  regions.  You 
have  a  right  to  this  open  dealing.  I  now  give  you  fair  warning. 


THE    CONTROVERSY    WITH    WHITEFIELD         329 

Shall  I  stay  here  opposing  you,  or  shall  I  depart  ? '  My  brother, 
have  you  dealt  thus  honestly  and  openly  with  him?  No.  But 
you  have  stolen  away  the  people's  heart  from  him.  And  when 
some  of  them  basely  treated  their  best  friend,  God  only  excepted, 
how  patiently  did  you  take  it !  When  did  you  ever  vindicate  us 
as  we  have  you  !  Why  did  you  not  plainly  tell  them,  you  are 
eternally  indebted  to  these  men  "I"1 

Cennick  had  by  this  time  formed  a  separate  society; 
and  Wesley,  who  always  believed  in  straightforward 
measures,  had  a  conference  with  the  group  of  revolters. 
"  Who  told  you,"  he  asked  them,  "  that  what  we  preach 
is  false  doctrine  ? " 

"I  did  say  this,"  replied  Cennick,  "and  I  say  it  still. 
However,  we  are  willing  to  join  with  you ;  but  we  will  also 
meet  apart  from  you." 

"You  should  have  told  me  this  before,"  said  Wesley, 
"  and  not  have  supplanted  me  in  my  own  house  ...  by 
private  accusations  separating  very  friends." 

Cennick  denied  that  he  had  privately  accused  Wesley. 
"  Judge,"  replied  Wesley  to  the  meeting ;  and  he  produced 
Cennick's  letter  to  Whitefield. 

The  gathering  separated  to  meet  again  in  a  week.  But 
when  tney  met,  Wesley  offered  them  not  arguments — 
it  was  no  time  for  debate — but  authority.  He  quietly 
stood  up  and  read  a  brief  paper : — 

"  By  many  witnesses  it  appears  that  several  members  of  the 
Band  Society  in  Kingswood  have  made  it  their  common  practice 
to  scoff  at  the  preaching  of  Mr.  John  and  Charles  Wesley ;  that 
they  have  censured  and  spoken  evil  of  them  behind  their  backs, 
at  the  very  time  they  professed  love  and  esteem  to  their  faces ; 
that  they  have  studiously  endeavoured  to  prejudice  other  members 
of  that  society  against  them,  and  in  order,  thereto,  have  belied 
and  slandered  them  in  divers  instances  ;  therefore,  not  for  their 
opinions,  nor  for  any  of  them  (whether  they  be  right  or  wrong), 
but  for  the  causes  above  mentioned,  viz.,  for  their  scoffing  at  the 
word  and  ministers  of  God,  for  their  tale-bearing,  back-biting,  and 
evil-speaking,  for  their  dissembling,  lying,  and  slandering,  I,  John 
Wesley,  by  the  consent  and  approbation  of  the  Band  Society  in 
Kingswood,  do  declare  the  persons  above  mentioned  to  be  no 
longer  members  thereof.  Neither  will  they  be  so  accounted  until 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  236. 


330  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

they  shall  openly  confess  their  fault,  and  thereby  do  what  in  them 
lies  to  remove  the  scandal  they  have  given." l 

One  of  Cennick's  followers  said : — 

" '  It  is  our  holding  election  which  is  the  true  cause  of  your 
separating  from  us.'  'You  know  in  your  own  conscience  it  is 
not/  replied  Wesley.  '  There  are  several  Predestinarians  in  our 
societies,  both  in  London  and  Bristol,  nor  did  I  ever  yet  put 
one  out  of  either  because  he  held  that  opinion.'  '.Well,'  said 
the  objector,  '  we  will  break  up  our  society,  on  condition  you  will 
receive  and  employ  Mr.  Cennick  as  you  did  before.'  '  My 
brother  has  wronged  me  much,'  replied  Wesley,  '  but  he  doth 
not  say,  "  I  repent." '  '  Unless  in  not  speaking  in  your  defence, 
I  do  not  know  that  I  wronged  you  at  all,'  said  Cennick. 
'Nothing  then  remains,  it  seems,'  said  Wesley,  'but  for  each 
to  choose  which  society  he  pleases.' " 

Whitefield  landed  from  America  shortly  afterwards. 
He  was  burdened  with  financial  difficulties  created  by  his 
orphan  house  in  Georgia,  and  he  was  suffering  from  a  tem- 
porary loss  of  popularity.  His  mood  was  bitter.  He  told 
Wesley  they  preached  two  different  Gospels ;  therefore  he 
would  not  join  him,  but  would  publicly  preach  against 
him,  if  ever  he  preached  at  all  again.  If  he  had  ever 
promised  not  to  do  this,  it  was  "  due  to  human  weakness," 
and  he  was  now  of  a  more  heroic  temper. 

Correspondence  betwixt  the  two  friends  grew  bitter, 
and  the  dispute  wandered  into  sad  realms — the  number 
of  candles  burned  at  Bristol,  the  quality  of  the  furniture 
in  Wesley's  bedroom.  "And  do  you  grudge  me  this?" 
asked  Wesley — "  a  garret  in  which  a  bed  is  placed.  Is  this 
the  voice  of  my  brother,  my  son,  Whitefield  ?." 

Whitefield  told  Wesley  in  reproachful  accents,  "  infidels 
of  all  kinds  are  on  your  side  of  the  question.  Deists, 
Arians,  Socinians  arraign  God's  sovereignty  and  stand 
up  for  universal  redemption."  It  needs  no  particular 
degree  of  scholarship  to  know  that  "  Deists,  Arians,  and 
Socinians "  believe  in  no  redemption  at  all ;  that  all  are 
philosophical  necessitarians.  But  scholarship  was  not 
Whitefield's  forte. 

Perhaps  neither  party  in  this  great  debate  looked  at 

1  Southey,  vol.  i.  p.  237. 


THE    CONTROVERSY    WITH    WHITEFIELD         331 

the  strong  point  in  his  opponent's  position.  Here  is  the 
fact  which  makes  the  tragedy  of  the  universe,  and  seems 
to  impeach  either  the  goodness  or  the  power  of  God: 
some  of  His  creatures  are  in  open  quarrel  with  His  laws. 
They  love  what  He  hates,  and  hate  what  He  loves ;  and 
being  in  quarrel  with  His  universe,  they  must  perish. 
Now,  any  system  of  theology  is  bound  to  supply  some 
explanation  of  this  grim  and  dreadful  fact. 

Coleridge  supplies  a  characteristically  vague  answer: 
an  answer  which  is  not  an  explanation  of  the  difficulty, 
but  a  flight  from  it : — 

"  In  the  question  of  Election  relatively  to  the  Divine  Elector, 
we  have  only  to  challenge  the  judicial  faculty  as  incompetent 
to  try  the  cause;  and  this  we  prove  at  once,  by  showing  the 
incapability  of  the  human  understanding  to  present  the  idea  to 
itself  as  it  really  is,  and  the  consequent  necessity  it  is  under 
of  substituting  anthropomorphic  conception,  determined  by  acci- 
dent of  place  and  time  (pre,  post,  futwum — before,  after,  to  come) 
as  feeble  analogies  and  approximations.  Having  thus  disqualified 
both  the  faculty  that  is  to  judge,  and  the  premises  that  are  to 
be  judged  of,  the  conclusion  perishes  per  abortem." l 

This,  of  course,  is  not  a  solution  of  the  problem,  but 
an  announcement  that  it  is  insoluble.  Human  reason, 
Coleridge  says,  in  effect,  is  incompetent  to  try  this 
case.  It  has  no  office  in  a  realm  so  high !  What  is  this 
but  a  proclamation  of  the  bankruptcy  of  reason  ? 

Whitetield's  Calvinism  had,  in  one  sense,  a  noble  root. 
It  sprang,  in  part,  at  least,  from  humility.  He  had  so 
overwhelming  a  consciousness  of  personal  ill-desert,  that 
it  seemed  incredible  that  any  act  or  condition  of  his  own 
could  be  an  element  in  his  acceptance  with  God.  But 
Whitefield  was  driven  into  naked  Calvinism  by  one 
dreadful,  and  what  seemed  flawless,  bit  of  logic.  To  say 
that  God  willed  to  save  a  man  who,  visibly,  was  not 
saved,  meant  that  God  had  suffered  moral  defeat  in  His 
own  world !  It  was  to  deny  His  omnipotence.  "  How 
could  all  be  universally  redeemed,"  he  asked,  "  if  all  are 
not  universally  saved  ? "  Whitefield  preferred  to  say 
God  would  not  save,  rather  than  that  He  could  not. 

1  Sonthey,  vol.  i.  p.  227. 


WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

Calvin  himself  calls  this  doctrine  "tremendum,  horren- 
dum,  incomprehensibile :  et  verissimum.  .  .  ."  And  it 
was  "  verissiinum  "  because  to  deny  it  seemed  the  denial 
of  God's  omnipotence. 

But  Wesley,  with  nobler  logic,  refused  to  save  God's 
omnipotence  at  the  cost  of  His  moral  character.  It  were 
better  to  deny  His  omnipotence  than  His  goodness ! 
Whitefield's  doctrine  could  only  be  true  on  the  theory 
that  right  and  wrong  are  not  changeless,  universal,  and 
eternal,  running  through  all  the  ranks  and  orders  of  the 
universe  up  to  God  Himself,  of  whose  character  they  are 
the  transcript.  But  is  it  thinkable  that  a  lie,  if  only 
God  tells  it,  is  as  sacred  as  truth;  that  what  would  be 
hateful  and  cruel,  if  found  in  human  conduct,  becomes 
admirable  and  good  if  it  is  only  God's  act !  That  is  to 
unsettle  all  morality  !  As  Miss  Wedgwood  puts  it : — 

"  The  human  being  who  came  nearest  to  the  God  of  the  Calvinists 
would  be  a  father  who  chose  out  certain  of  his  children  to  be 
sent  away  from  his  sight,  at  their  birth,  into  some  den  of  wicked- 
ness, to  be  brought  up  there ;  and  who  afterwards  took  an  active 
share  in  bringing  them  to  the  gallows.  And  yet  men  who  would 
have  died  any  number  of  deaths  themselves  to  save  one  soul  from 
hell  have  regarded  the  decree  by  which  the  greater  portion  of 
the  human  race  was  devoted  to  hell  before  the  world  began  not 
merely  with  reverent  awe,  but  with  delight."  a 

But  did  Wesley's  theology  save  God's  character  at  the 
expense  of  His  omnipotence  ?  Assuredly  not !  The  key 
to  the  problem  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  moral  good- 
ness itself.  Moral  freedom  is  the  essential  condition  of 
moral  character.  Goodness  means  the  choice  of  obedi- 
ence when  disobedience  is  possible.  And  when  God 
created  moral  character  He  took  the  tremendous  and 
inevitable  risks  of  that  great  act.  In  the  realm  of  moral 
character  omnipotence  nas  no  office ;  and  God  has  set 
us  in  that  high  kingdom.  But  this  represents  not  the 
defeat  of  God's  omnipotence,  but  only  its  self-imposed 
limitations. 

"  Thought,  conscience,  will — to  make  them  all  thine  own 
He  rent  a  pillar  from  th'  eternal  throne. 

1  Wedgwood,  p.  230. 


THE    CONTROVERSY   WITH   WHITEFIELD         333 

Made  in  His  image,  thou  must  nobly  dare 
The  thorny  crown  of  sovereignty  to  wear. 
Think  not  too  meanly  of  thy  low  estate ; 
Thou  hast  a  choice ;  to  choose  is  to  create." 

The  denial  of  this  truth  robs  all  moral  terms  of  their 
significance,  and  we  must  reconstruct  human  language. 
If  the  human  soul  is  only  a  machine  which  must  obey 
the  impulse  towards  lust  or  purity,  towards  love  or 
cruelty,  which  its  Maker  has  given  it,  what  use  is  there 
for  the  phraseology  of  either  praise  or  blame  ?  And  how 
does  it  come  to  pass,  it  may  be  asked,  that  a  machine 
has  come  to  conceive  a  thought  of  goodness  which  is  not 
that  of  a  machine? 

We  do  not  save  the  moral  character  of  God  by  denying 
the  free  will  of  man;  we  only  transfer  the  shame  and 
guilt  of  human  sin  to  God  Himself.  He  is  its  author ! 
He  planned  it;  He  ordained  it.  He  meant  the  harlot 
as  well  as  the  saint ;  the  betrayer  as  well  as  the  martyr ; 
Judas  as  well  as  John,  and  Domitian  as  well  as  Paul. 
And  He  then  pursues  His  own  creatures  with  wrath 
through  all  the  chambers  of  His  universe,  and  all  the 
ages  of  His  eternity,  for  being  what  He  made  them. 
We  may  vary  Calvin's  dreadful  epithets.  This  doctrine 
is  "  tremendum,  horrendum,  incomprehensibile,  et  FAL- 
SISSIMUM." 

It  is  certain  that  in  human  society  we  must  act  on 
the  theory  that  men  are  responsible  for  their  acts,  and 
be  justly  punished  or  rewarded  for  them.  It  is  certain 
that  God,  too,  acts  on  that  theory ;  and  if  it  is  not  true, 
then  not  only  human  society,  but  the  whole  moral 
universe  itself,  is  built  on  a  lie.  If  goodness  is  compelled 
and  involuntary,  it  ceases  to  be  goodness ;  and  compelled 
and  involuntary  sin  the  human  conscience,  with  its  utmost 
authority,  declares  to  be  no  sin.  The  theory  that  denies 
this  is  in  conflict  with  the  surest  and  deepest  judgment 
of  the  human  soul.  No  !  God  has  set  up  in  the  human 
soul  the  august  faculty  of  a  free  moral  will ;  a  will  that 
has  power  to  say  "yes"  or  "no"  to  Himself.  And  the 
key  to  the  glory  as  well  as  the  tragedy  of  the  universe 
lies  there. 

The  general  conscience  of  the  race,  we  have  said,  has 


334  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

arrayed  itself  finally  on  the  side  of  Wesley  as  against  the 
Moravian  reading  of  religion.  And  both  the  reason  and 
the  conscience  of  mankind  have  declared  themselves  on 
the  side  of  Wesley  as  against  Whitefield's  perverse  and 
dreadful  theology. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  ONFALL   OF   THE  BISHOPS 

IN  a  famous  passage  Macaulay  discusses  the  use  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  would  have  made  of  Wesley.  Rome  cer- 
tainly knows  the  value  of  enthusiasm,  and  has  the  art 
of  using  enthusiasts.  What  is  the  secret  of  the  strange 
arrest  which  fell  upon  the  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  so  that  while  Northern  Europe  became  Protestant, 
Southern  Europe  remained,  and  remains,  Roman  Catholic  ? 
The  explanation,  of  course,  is  found  chiefly  in  the  emer- 

£snce  of  the  great  Order  of  the  Society  of  Jesus.  Ignatius 
oyola  is  the  champion  Rome  evolved  against  Luther. 
He  was  an  enthusiast  of  the  most  fanatical  type,  and  the 
Roman  Church,  instead  of  quarrelling  with  him,  found  a 
use  for  him ;  permitted  him  to  create  an  Order,  and  turned 
him,  and  it,  into  the  most  formidable  of  weapons  against 
its  enemies.  "  At  Rome,"  says  Macaulay,  "  the  Countess  of 
Huntingdon  would  have  been  given  a  place  in  the  calendar 
as  St.  Selina  ;  Johanna  Southcote  would  have  founded  an 
order  of  barefooted  Carmelites ;  Mrs.  Fry  would  have  been 
the  first  superior  of  the  Blessed  Order  of  Sisters  of  the 
Gaols."  Ignatius  Loyola  at  Oxford  would  have  headed  a 
secession ;  John  Wesley  at  Rome  would  have  become  the 
first  General  of  a  new  Society  devoted  to  the  interests  and 
honour  of  the  Church. 

This  is  one  of  those  easy  and  picturesque  generalisa- 
tions which  are  the  charm — and  the  peril — of  Macaulay's 
historical  writings.  Loyola  was  a  Spaniard,  a  fanatic ;  a 
soldier  with  an  intellect  as  narrow  and  as  hard  as  his  own 
sword.  Wesley  was  an  Englishman,  a  scholar,  a  logician, 
a  saint.  The  two  men  under  no  conditions  could  have 
exchanged  parts.  The  Church  of  Rome,  moreover,  is  a 
spiritual  despotism.  In  the  Order  of  Jesus,  its  highest 
expression,  slavery  is  crystallised  into  a  system.  The 
Church  and  the  Order  correspond  to  each  other;  for 


335 


336  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

despotism  and  slavery  are  eternal  correlatives.  But  the 
Anglican  Church,  with  all  its  faults,  represents  spiritual 
freedom.  It  failed  to  find  a  place  for  Wesley,  and  that 
failure  is  the  scandal  and  tragedy  of  its  history.  It  jus- 
tifies the  description  of  Anglicanism  as  "the  Church  of 
missed  opportunities."  But  under  no  conditions  could  it 
have  produced  an  Ignatius  Loyola,  or  found  a  use  for  one. 
But  how  did  it  happen  that  the  Anglican  Church  could 
not  find  a  use  for  Wesley  and  his  great  comrades  ?  These 
men  were  more  than  its  children ;  they  were  God's  great 
and  special  gifts  to  it.  They  had  an  unquestioning  faith 
in  its  doctrines,  and  were  fanatically  zealous  for  its  ritual 
and  its  services.  Whitefield,  if  his  sermons  are  judged  by 
their  immediate  effects,  was  perhaps  the  greatest  preacher 
the  English  race  has  ever  produced.  John  Wesley  had 
unsurpassed  gifts  of  leadership.  Charles  Wesley  is  one 
of  the  immortal  hymn-writers  of  the  Christian  religion. 
What  Church  might  not  have  welcomed  such  men  as 
divine  gifts  !  These  men,  too,  brought  to  the  religion  of 
the  eighteenth  century  exactly  what  it  wanted  ;  the  note 
of  passion,  the  contagious  energy  of  intense  enthusiasm. 
And  they  were  specially  fitted  to  render  the  one  service 
the  social  and  religious  life  of  that  day  needed — the  service 
of  bridging  the  fast  widening  chasm  betwixt  the  Church 
and  the  common  people.  On  one  side  they  were  scholars 
and  gentlemen ;  on  the  other  they  were  themselves  trained 
in  poverty,  and  could  talk  the  language  of  the  common 
people.  Wesley  could  preach  from  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's, 
at  Oxford  to  the  Heads  of  colleges,  to  Fellows  and  under- 

fraduates  and  proctors,  and  hold  them  breathless.     But 
e  could  preach,  too,  in  Gwennap  Pit,  or  on  the  hill-side  of 
Kingswood,  to  10,000  rough  miners  and  watch  the  tears 
running  down  well-nigh  as  many  faces. 

Why  did  the  Anglican  Church  of  that  day  shut 
its  doors  against  men  like  these,  and  turn  them,  in  spite 
of  themselves,  into  "  schismatics  "  ?  They  were  its  own 
children,  baptized  at  its  font,  fed  at  its  table,  taught  in 
its  universities.  It  evolved  these  men,  educated  them 
ordained  them,  and  then — cast  them  out ! 

Newman's  pathetic  cry  when  he  finally  broke  with  the 
Anglican  Church  is  still  remembered.  "  Oh  my  Mother ! 
whence  is  this  unto  thee,  that  thou  hast  good  things  poured 


THE    ONFALL   OF   THE   BISHOPS  337 

upon  thee  and  canst  not  keep  them,  and  bearest  children 
yet  darest  not  own  them  ?  .  .  .  How  is  it  that  whatever 
is  generous  in  purpose,  and  tender  or  deep  in  devotion, 
thy  flower  and  thy  promise,  falls  from  thy  bosom  and 
finds  no  hope  within  thine  arms  ? "  With  better  title 
than  even  Newman  Wesley  might  have  written  those 
words. 

The  story  of  the  slow,  reluctant,  compelled  steps  by 
•which  Wesley  formally  separated — or  prepared  his  fol- 
lowers for  separation — from  the  Anglican  Church  will  be 
told  later.  But  there  is  already  visible,  at  this  early  stage 
of  its  history,  a  fatal  inability  on  the  part  of  the  Anglican 
Church  to  understand  the  new  movement;  a  hopeless 
breach  of  sympathy  with  it ;  a  mood  of  angry  suspicion 
about  it,  which  swiftly  hardened  into  dislike,  and  even 
grew  fierce  with  hate.  "  We  cannot  but  regard  you,"  wrote 
one  of  the  Anglican  leaders  of  that  day,  "  as  our  most 
dangerous  enemies."  And  yet  the  Church  of  that  day 
had  many  enemies — gigantic  national  vices,  a  triumphant 
infidelity,  a  spiritual  indifference  that  lay  like  an  Ant- 
arctic frost  on  a  whole  people. 

The  Fellows  of  Magdalen  required  candidates  for  uni- 
versity prizes  to  sign  a  paper  renouncing  "the  practice 
and  principles  of  the  people  called  Methodists."  Bishops 
levelled  their  charges  at  the  unfortunate  Methodists.  The 
clergy  not  seldom  inspired,  and  sometimes  even  publicly 
led,  the  mobs  against  them.  They  were  forbidden  to 
preach  under  Church  roofs,  and  then  treated  as  criminal, 
because  they  preached  under  the  open  sky.  "  They  thrust 
us  into  the  mud,"  says  Wesley,  "and  then  complained 
because  we  were  dirty." 

Wesley  and  his  comrades,  on  their  part,  had  at  first 
an  almost  passionate  eagerness  of  obedience.  It  was 
only  when  ecclesiastical  obedience  meant  disobedience  to 
some  spiritual  obligation — when  the  lower  duty  was  in 
conflict  with  the  higher — that  a  breach  occurred.  There 
is  an  amusing  account  of  an  interview  betwixt  Gibson, 
Bishop  of  London,  and  the  two  Wesleys.  Gibson,  as  we 
have  already  said,  was  a  fair  type  of  the  Hanoverian 
divines  of  that  day;  a  scholar,  a  politician — he  was 
familiarly  known  as  the  "  Pope  "  of  Walpole,  the  Prime 
Minister — a  man  who  cared  much  for  secular  peace  and 

Y 


338  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

little  for  spiritual  ideals.  Each  of  the  brothers  had  his 
special  difficulty  to  submit  to  the  Bishop.  John  Wesley, 
the  graver  spirit  of  the  two,  his  mind  full  of  the  new 
spiritual  movement  beginning  to  stir,  asked  his  bishop 
whether,  if  he  preached  a  sermon  to  one  of  his  societies, 
this  turned  it  into  a  conventicle,  and  so  made  it  illegal. 
Charles  Wesley,  always  the  High  Churchman,  began  to 
argue  for  the  rebaptizing  of  Dissenters.  And  his  logic 
was  resistless  !  If  the  High  Church  theory  is  true — if 
baptism  carries  with  it  such  tremendous  consequences, 
and  if  issues  so  vast  depend  on  the  right  set  of  fingers  being 
employed — ought  not  an  unhappy  Dissenter's  salvation  to 
be  put  beyond  doubt  by  the  process  of  rebaptizing  him  ? 
"  Sure  and  unsure,"  Charles  Wesley  told  his  bishop, 
"were  not  the  same." 

Gibson  looked  at  the  two  brothers  with  alarm,  and 
satisfied  neither  of  them.  An  eighteenth-century  bishop 
was  required,  no  doubt,  like  modern  bishops,  to  walk  on 
a  tight  rope  with  much  anxious  balancing ;  but  Gibson 
was  only  the  Lord  Melbourne  of  a  century  later  in  lawn 
sleeves  and  an  apron.  His  ideal  about  everything  is 
expressed  by  Melbourne's  famous  question:  "Can't 
you  let  it  alone  ? "  These  young  men  were  enthusiasts ; 
and  "  enthusiasm "  was  the  one  deadly  and  unforgivable 
offence  of  which  the  eighteenth  -  century  divine  could 
be  guilty.  The  mere  hint  or  whisper  of  it  affected 
all  the  Anglican  leaders  of  that  day  as  a  sudden  rise  in 
the  thermometer  might  affect  a  company  of  architects 
who  had  just  succeeded  in  raising  a  palace  of  ice.  It  was 
a  secret  omen  of  swift-coming  and  inevitable  ruin  ! 

The  Church  of  England,  moreover,  is  a  bundle  of 
theological  compromises.  In  the  variety  of  their  con- 
tents, the  Thirty-nine  Articles  resemble  the  sheet  Peter 
saw  in  vision  let  down  from  heaven.  Now  enthusiasm  is 
always  fatal  to  compromise.  So  the  Articles  were,  for 
the  clergy  of  that  day,  either  attenuated  into  metaphors 
or  frozen  into  icicles.  But  Methodism  offered  them  the 
startling  apparition  of  these  same  Articles  suddenly  be- 
come alive,  translated  out  of  decorous  abstractions  into 
living  conduct ;  visiting  the  gaols,  preaching  in  the  fields, 
talking  the  language  of  the  common  people.  And  the 


THE    ONFALL   OF   THE   BISHOPS  339 

leaders  of  the  new  movement,  when  bishops  frowned  on 
them,  church  doors  were  shut  against  them,  and  the 
symbols  of  Christ's  death  were  refused  to  them,  instead 
of  betaking  themselves  out  of  the  Church  and  turning 
Dissenters,  insisted  on  stopping  inside  it,  and  even  on 
trying  to  mend  it !  "  You,"  cried  the  exasperated  divines 
of  that  day,  "  are  our  most  dangerous  enemies." 

The  Anglican  Church  in  the  eighteenth  century  was, 
in  brief,  a  sort  of  theological  Sargasso  Sea.  On  its  weedy 
and  tideless  waters  institutions  and  articles  floated  as 
wrecks  float  in  those  tepid  latitudes.  The  movement 
originated  by  Wesley  and  his  fellows  resembled  a  Gulf 
Stream  set  suddenly  flowing  through  the  stagnant  depths, 
a  gale  of  bracing  northern  ah*  suddenly  blowing  across 
the  moveless  atmosphere,  much  to  the  disturbance  of 
all  the  weed-grown  hulls  floating  peacefully  there. 

On  the  part  of  the  Anglican  Church  there  was  no 
formal  act  of  expulsion  registered.  But  there  was  a 
wordless,  a  more  than  half  unconscious,  but  a  final  re- 
jection of  the  new  spiritual  movement  and  all  it  meant; 
a  rejection  which  constitutes  one  of  the  most  tragical 
chapters  in  the  history  of  that  Church.  And  that  re- 
jection, it  is  clear,  was  due  to  a  fundamental  discord  of 
temper,  the  inevitable  and  eternal  quarrel  betwixt  fire 
and  ice. 

Four  bishops  have  won  an  evil  fame  for  themselves  by 
their  dealings  with  Whitefield  and  the  Wesleys.  Gibson, 
Bishop  of  London,  began  by  being  politely  tolerant  of  the 
new  movement,  and  ended  by  throwing  his  whole  weight 
into  the  scales  against  it.  He  published  a  notable  tract 
against  the  Methodists,  in  which  he  laments  through 
whole  pages  that  the  Methodists  declined  to  emigrate 
from  the  Established  Church.  The  Act  of  Toleration 
of  1689,  exempted  from  certain  penal  statutes  persons 
who  dissented  from  the  Church  of  England ;  and  any 
person  who  desired  to  acquire  the  most  rudimentary 
liberty  of  conscience  and  of  act  had  to  pay  the  price  of 
declaring  himself  a  Dissenter.  But  the  Methodists  refused 
to  label  themselves  with  that  title.  They  crowded  to  the 
services  of  the  Church.  They  thronged  to  the  Communion 
table  in  such  numbers  that,  as  Gibson  lamented  almost 


340  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

with  tears,  a  clergyman  had  not  time  to  dine  before 
afternoon  service!  The  Wesleys,  he  added  indignantly, 
"  have  had  the  boldness  to  preach  in  the  fields  and  other 
open  places,  and  by  public  advertisements  to  invite  the 
rabble  to  be  their  hearers " ;  and  still,  as  this  curious 
bishop  complained,  they  refused  to  emigrate  from  the 
Church — a  Church  which  certainly  had  no  message  for 
"  the  rabble,"  and  no  desire  to  be  charged  with  one. 

Gibson  was  particularly  affronted  with  the  place  given 
in  the  working  theology  of  these  new  religious  teachers 
to  the  Holy  Spirit.  He,  like  many  of  his  clergy,  held 
the  curious  theory  that  the  Divine  Spirit  acted  everywhere 
in  general,  but  nowhere  in  particular;  while  the  deluded 
Methodists  actually  taught  the  incredible  doctrine  that 
the  Holy  Spirit  worked  in  individual  souls,  and  mani- 
fested His  influence  at  particular  moments.  Whitefield 
answered  the  bishop  very  happily  : — 

"  Does  it  not  frequently  happen,  my  Lord,  that  the  comfort  and 
happiness  of  our  whole  lives  depend  on  one  particular  action? 
And  where  then  is  the  absurdity  of  saying  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
may,  even  in  the  minutest  circumstances,  direct  and  rule  our 
hearts  ?  .  .  .  Did  I  not,  when  ordained  deacon,  affirm  '  that  I  was 
inwardly  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost  to  take  upon  me  that  office 
and  ministration '  1  Did  not  my  Lord  of  Gloucester,  when  he 
ordained  me  priest,  say  unto  me,  '  Receive  thou  the  Holy  Ghost 
now  committed  unto  thee  by  the  imposition  of  our  hands '  ?  And 
is  not  this,  my  Lord,  a  reasonable  evidence  that  I  act  by  a  divine 
commission  ?  If  this  be  not  true,  must  not  all  those  whom  your 
Lordship  ordains  act  only  by  a  human  commission  ? " l 

One  of  Gibson's  clergy,  Church,  Prebend  of  St.  Paul's, 
had  published  a  pamphlet  in  support  of  his  diocesan, 
declaring  that  the  Methodists  were  "  rooting  out  the 
remains  of  piety  and  devotion  in  the  weak  and  well- 
meaning."  Wesley,  who  was  always  sensitive  to  any 
attack  on  the  practical  result  of  his  work,  fell  upon  the 
unfortunate  prebend  with  the  fury  and  impact  of  a 
thunderbolt.  "  The  people,"  Church  wrote,  "  went  on  in 

1  Wedgwood,  p.  305. 


THE   ONFALL   OF   THE   BISHOPS  341 

a  quiet  and  regular  practice  of  their   duty  before  you 
deluded  them."    Wesley  replies : — 

"  Let  us  bring  this  question  into  as'narrow  a  compass  as  possible. 
Let  us  go  no  further  as  to  time  than  seven  years  past,  as  to  place 
than  London  and  the  part  adjoining,  as  to  persons  than  you  and 
me,  Thomas  Church  preaching  one  doctrine,  John  Wesley  the  other. 
Now  then,  let  us  consider  with  meekness  and  fear  what  have  been 
the  consequences  of  each  doctrine.  I  beseech  you  to  consider  in  the 
secret  of  your  heart  how  many  sinners  you  have  converted  to  God. 
By  their  fruits  we  shall  know  them.  By  this  test  let  them  be 
tried.  How  many  outwardly  and  habitually  wicked  men  have 
you  brought  to  uniform  habits  of  outward  holiness?  'Tis  an 
awful  thought.  Can  you  instance  in  a  hundred  ?  In  fifty  1  In 
twenty  ?  In  ten  1  If  not,  take  heed  unto  yourself  and  to  your 
doctrine.  It  cannot  be  that  both  are  right  before  God.  Consider 
now  (I  would  not  speak,  but  I  dare  not  refrain)  what  have  been  the 
consequences  of  even  my  preaching  the  other  doctrine?  By  the 
fruits  shall  we  know  those  of  whom  I  speak,  even  the  cloud  of 
witnesses  who  at  this  hour  experience  the  doctrine  I  preach  to 
be  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation.  The  habitual  drunkard  that 
was,  is  now  temperate  in  all  things.  The  whoremonger  now  flees 
fornication.  He  that  stole  steals  no  more,  but  works  with  his 
hands.  He  that  has  cursed  or  swore,  perhaps  at  every  sentence, 
has  now  learned  to  serve  the  Lord  with  fear,  and  rejoice  unto 
Him  with  reverence.  These  are  demonstrable  facts.  I  can  name 
the  men,  with  their  several  places  of  abode." l 

Wesley  usually  treated  bishops  with  respect,  but  a 
later  charge  of  Bishop  Gibson,  written  in  1747,  roused  his 
indignation.  He  accused  Wesley  of  teaching  that  favoured 
a  low  type  of  morality,  and  charged  his  clergy  to  warn 
mankind  in  general  against  the  Methodists.  Wesley 
replied  in  words  which  vibrate  with  a  grave  and  noble 
indignation  :— 

"Here  is  an  angel  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  one  of  the  stars 
in  God's  right  hand,  calling  together  all  the  subordinate  pastors, 
for  whom  he  is  to  give  an  account  to  God,  and  directing  them 
in  the  name  of  the  Great  Shepherd  of  the  sheep,  the  First 


Wedgwood,  p.  306. 


342  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Begotten  from  the  dead,  the  Prince  of  the  kings  of  the  earth, 
how  to  make  full  proof  of  their  ministry,  that  they  may  be  free 
from  the  blood  of  all  men  ;  how  to  feed  the  flock  of  God,  which 
He  hath  purchased  with  His  own  blood  !  To  this  end  they  are 
all  assembled  together.  And  what  is  the  substance  of  all  his 
instructions'?  'Reverend  brethren,  I  charge  you  all,  lift  up  your 
voice  like  a  trumpet,  and  warn,  and  arm,  and  fortify  all  mankind 
— against  a  people  called  Methodists.' 

"  Is  it  possible  ?  Could  your  lordship  discern  no  other  enemies 
of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  1  Are  there  no  Papists,  no  Deists  in  the 
land  ?  Have  the  Methodists  (so-called)  monopolised  all  the  sins, 
as  well  as  errors,  in  the  nation  ?  Is  Methodism  the  only  spreading 
sin  to  be  found  without  the  Bills  of  Mortality  1 " 1 

Bishop  Lavington  added  himself  later  to  the  choir  of 
bishops  lifting  up  their  voices  in  rebuke  of  Methodism, 
and  his  contribution  to  the  angry  music  was  of  a  very 
shrill  kind.  Bishop  Lavington,  says  Miss  Wedgwood  with 
feminine  energy,  "  deserves  to  be  coupled  with  the  men 
who  flung  dead  cats  and  rotten  eggs  at  the  Methodists, 
not  with  those  who  assailed  their  tenets  with  arguments, 
or  even  serious  rebuke."  The  particular  missile  Lavington 
flung  at  Methodism  was  the  charge  that  it  was  but  Roman 
Catholicism  thinly  disguised.  Methodism  reproduced,  he 
asserted,  every  evil  quality  of  Romanism ;  its  bigotry, 
its  fanaticism,  its  falsehood.  Bishop  Lavington  made  an 
excursion  into  heathen  realms  in  search  of  a  parallel  to 
Methodism,  and  found  it  in  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.  In 
the  filthiest  reading  of  those  mysteries  the  Bishop  dis- 
covers what  he  thinks  is  a  final  explanation  of  Methodism ; 
it  is  the  work  of  some  evil  spirit,  a  sort  of  magical  opera- 
tion of  diabolical  illusion. 

Both  Wesley  and  Whitefield  replied  to  Bishop  Laving- 
ton, Wesley  in  a  tone  of  severity,  Whitefield  in  a  gentler 
note;  and  for  once  Whitefield  proved  the  more  formid- 
able disputant.  Gentleness  is  sometimes  a  more  effective 
weapon  than  anger.  He  showed,  with  fine  and  resistless 
logic,  that  Bishop  Lavington's  attack  on  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  new  movement  was  an  assault  rather  upon  Christianity 
than  upon  Methodism.  The  episcopal  logic  that  con- 

1  Wedgwood,  p.  310. 


THE   ONFALL   OF  THE   BISHOPS  343 

deinned  Wesley  and  Whitefield  would  have  smitten  with 
equal  fury  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul. 

Bishop  Home,  of  Norwich,  showed  a  better  temper 
than  his  brother  bishops,  but  his  logic  was  as  feeble  and 
as  strange  as  theirs,  and  his  dislike  of  Methodism  as 
acute.  In  a  sermon  preached  before  the  University  of 
Oxford  he  charged  "  the  new  lights  of  the  tabernacle  and 
the  Foundry"  with  evil  teaching  as  to  faith  and  lax 
teaching  as  to  morality.  "  Have  you  ever  read,"  Wesley 
replied, "  the  writings  of  which  you  speak  ? "  As  a  matter 
of  fact  Home  had  not  thought  it  necessary  to  read 
Wesley's  writings  before  replying  to  them.  For  Home, 
as  for  many  other  disputants,  the  business  of  refuting 
his  opponent's  opinions  was  made  much  easier  by  taking 
the  precaution  of  omitting  to  know  what  they  were. 
"Had  you  only  taken  the  trouble  of  reading  one  tract 
— the  '  Appeal  to  Men  of  Reason  and  Religion,' "  said 
Wesley,  "  you  would  have  seen  that  a  great  part  of  what 
you  affirm  is  what  I  never  denied."  And  he  proceeded 
to  show,  what  indeed  was  obvious,  that  all  he  taught 
was  found  in  the  Articles  and  in  the  Bible. 

Warburton,  the  great  literary  bully  of  his  day,  fell 
upon  the  Methodists  with  a  bludgeon.  Warburton  was 
by  original  profession  an  attorney,  a  calling  for  which 
nature  plainly  intended  him,  but  ill-fortune,  both  for 
himself  and  for  the  Church,  made  him  a  bishop ;  though 
De  Quincey  suggests  that  Warburton's  betaking  himself 
to  long  sleeves  and  an  apron  saved  the  twelve  judges  of 
that  day  from  being  driven  mad  by  his  amazing  gifts 
of  angry  controversy.  Bentley  dismissed  Warburton's 
scholarship  by  saying  that  he  was  "a  man  of  monstrous 
appetite  but  bad  digestion";  and  a  competent  critic  has 
sufficiently  described  his  controversial  style  by  saying 
that  Warburton's  stock  argument  is  a  threat  to  cudgel 
any  one  who  disputes  his  opinion. 

Warburton's  arrogance  soared  to  strange  altitudes.  His 
creed,  says  Leslie  Stephen,  might  be  summed  up  in  the 
words,  "There  is  but  one  God,  and  Warburton  is  His 
attorney-general ! "  He  led  for  years  "  the  life  of  a 
terrier  in  a  rat  -  pit  worrying  all  sorts  of  theological 
vermin."  It  was  his  agreeable  habit  to  describe  his 


344  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

opponents  as  "wretches,  the  most  contemptible  for  their 
facts,  the  most  infernal  for  their  morals."  And  this 
terrier  in  long  sleeves  and  episcopal  apron  treated  the 
Wesleys  as  so  much  vermin  to  be  worried,  and  with  a 
sort  of  canine  relish. 

How  a  divine  of  this  temper  assailed  such  men  as 
Whitefield  and  the  Wesleys  may  be  guessed.  He  de- 
clared that  the  Holy  Spirit  had  fulfilled  His  office  when 
the  canon  of  Scripture  was  completed.  It  was  mere 
fanaticism  to  claim  the  enlightening  grace  01  that  Spirit 
in  modern  days ;  as  if,  Warburton  shouted,  in  indignant 
tones,  "it  needed  the  further  assistance  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  explain  His  own  meaning."  Then  this  "father 
in  God"  fell  upon  John  Wesley  personally.  He  was 
cowardly,  he  was  false,  he  was  vindictive ;  he  challenged 
persecution  and  then  ran  away  from  it;  he  was  a  mere 
wily  and  malignant  hypocrite,  &c.  &c.  And  these  were 
the  kindest  words  that  a  bishop  of  the  Anglican  Church 
could  find  to  expend  on  a  son  of  that  Church  who  was 
toiling  with  an  intensity  of  zeal,  unparalleled  since  apos- 
tolic days,  to  bring  fallen  men  and  women  into  Christ's 
kingdom  ! 

Who  reads  these  faded  pamphlets  and  letters  in  which 
still  smoulder  the  fires  of  far-off  and  long-dead  contro- 
versies finds  himself  irresistibly  on  Wesley's  side;  and 
this  is  not  merely  because  he  writes  better  English,  em- 
ploys a  more  convincing  logic,  and  bears  himself  with  a 
finer  temper  than  his  opponents.  He  dwells  visibly  on 
a  higher  level  than  they.  He  represents  a  different  re- 
ligious climate.  Here  is  a  man  who  sees  the  real  end 
for  which  all  Church  machinery  exists ;  and  he  will  not 
sacrifice  these  great  ends  for  some  small,  irrelevant — not 
to  say  impertinent — question  of  machinery.  For  him, 
at  least,  the  end  is  more  than  the  means,  and  nobler. 
Moorfields,  where  such  vast  open-air  crowds  hung  on 
Wesley's  preaching,  happened  to  be  in  the  ecclesiastical 
parish  of  a  certain  Dr.  Buckley,  otherwise  quite  unknown 
to  history;  and  the  Bishop  of  London,  who  thought 
much  of  his  clergy's  rights  and  little  of  the  sad  crowds 
outside  all  the  churches,  wept  rhetorical  tears  through 
a  whole  episcopal  charge  over  the  injuries  Dr.  Buckley 


THE    ONFALL   OF   THE   BISHOPS  345 

suffered  by  Wesley  preaching  in  the  open  air  within  the 
bounds  of  his  parish.  Here  are  a  few  sentences  from 
Wesley's  reply : — 

"There  are,  in  and  near  Moorfields,  ten  thousand  poor  souls, 
for  whom  Christ  died,  rushing  headlong  into  hell.  Is  Dr.  Buckley, 
the  parochial  minister,  both  willing  and  able  to  stop  them?  If 
so,  let  it  be  done,  and  I  have  no  place  in  these  parts.  I  go,  and 
call  other  sinners  to  repentance.  But  if,  after  all  that  he  has 
done,  and  all  that  he  can  do,  they  are  still  in  the  broad  way  to 
destruction,  let  me  see  if  God  will  put  a  word  even  in  my  mouth." 

Later  will  be  discussed  the  whole  subject  of  the  rela- 
tion betwixt  the  Church  of  England  and  Wesley,  and 
the  events  which  compelled  him  to  form  what  proved 
to  be  a  separate  Church.  But  the  general  attitude  of 
the  Church  towards  the  revival  is  to  be  judged  by  the 
utterances  of  its  leaders,  such  as  we  have  described. 
And  the  example  of  the  bishops  provoked,  as  was  natural, 
rough  imitation.  Bishops  wrote  treatises  against  the 
Methodists;  the  clergy  preached  sermons  against  them; 
the  mob  flung  stones.  Each  class  used  its  own  weapons. 
Lawn  sleeves  in  episcopal  palaces,  when  translated  into 
the  vernacular,  became  mere  mud  and  cudgels.  The 
clergy,  it  may  be  added,  not  seldom  carried  their  hate 
of  the  revival  to  the  sacramental  table  itself.  Thus 
Charles  Wesley  records  in  his  Journal: — 

"  Sunday,  July  27. — I  heard  a  miserable  sermon  at  Temple 
Church,  recommending  religion  as  the  most  likely  way  to  raise 
a  fortune.  After  it  proclamation  was  made  that  all  should  depart 
who  were  not  of  the  parish.  While  the  shepherd  was  driving 
away  the  lambs,  I  stayed,  suspecting  nothing,  till  the  clerk  came 
to  me,  and  said,  'Mr.  Beecher  bids  you  go  away;  for  he  will 
not  give  you  the  Sacrament.'  I  went  to  the  vestry  door,  and 
mildly  desired  Mr.  Beecher  to  admit  me.  He  asked,  '  Are  you 
of  this  parish?'  I  answered,  'Sir,  you  see  I  am  a  clergyman.' 
Dropping  his  first  pretence,  he  charged  me  with  rebellion  in 
expounding  the  Scripture  without  authority,  and  said,  in  express 
words,  'I  repel  you  from  the  Sacrament.'  I  replied,  'I  cite  you 
to  answer  this  before  Jesus  Christ  at  the  day  of  judgment.'  This 
enraged  him  above  measure.  He  called  out,  '  Here !  take  away 


346  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

this  man ! '  The  constables  were  ordered  to  attend ;  I  suppose 
lest  the  furious  colliers  should  take  the  Sacrament  by  force.  But 
I  saved  them  the  trouble  of  taking  away  '  this  man,'  and  quietly 
retired." 

What  profit  is  there  recalling  to  human  memory  such 
old,  far-off,  unhappy,  and  now  forgotten,  conflicts?  But 
this  controversy,  like  that  with  the  Moravians,  and  that 
with  Whitefield,  helped  to  shape  history.  And  the  his- 
tory of  which  the  Methodist  Church  to-day  is  the  out- 
come cannot  be  understood  without  the  tale  of  this  dispute 
being  told. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE     CONFERENCE 

IT  was  clear,  almost  at  the  first  breath,  that  Wesley's 
work  was  charged  with  strange  forces  and  unguessed  pos- 
sibilities, and,  as  we  have  seen,  it  quickly  took  a  great 
scale.  Within  the  brief  period  of  five  years  (1739-44) 
it  was  visibly  stirring  England.  It  found  everywhere 
hearers  in  multitudes ;  its  converts  were  to  be  counted  by 
thousands.  What  was  in  progress  was  not  so  much  a 
revival  as  a  religious  revolution. 

At  this  stage  Wesley  himself  seems  to  become  vaguely 
conscious  of  the  momentum  of  the  forces  stirring  about 
him.  He  sees  new  agencies  springing  to  existence  under 
his  hands.  He  catches  a  dim  and  broken  vision  of  the 
possibility  of  his  work.  And  with  the  true  instinct  of  a 
great  leader  he  sets  himself  to  create  a  sort  of  regulating 
centre  for  the  movement.  It  was  necessary  to  give  clear- 
ness to  its  theology,  method  to  its  zeal,  order  to  its 
energies,  discipline  to  its  results.  Wesley  was  by  natural 
genius  intolerant  of  confusion.  He  must  weave  into  one 
close-knitted,  methodical  plan  all  the  forces  and  agencies 
of  which  he  was  the  personal  centre.  So  on  June  25, 
1744,  he  called  his  first  Conference;  a  council  in  which, 
with  a  few  spirits  most  akin  to  his  own,  he  may  formulate 
plans  for  the  spiritual  campaign  now  in  progress. 

It  consisted  of  just  ten  men,  the  two  Wesleys  them- 
selves and  four  other  clergymen  —  Hodges,  rector  of 
Wenvoe  ;  Piers,  vicar  of  Bexley ;  Taylor,  vicar  of  Quintin, 
and  John  Merriton.  To  these  were  added  later  four  lay 
preachers  who  had  not  the  status  of  ministers — Thomas 
Maxfield,  John  Downs,  Thomas  Richards,  and  John  Bennet. 
This  little  company  met  in  the  Foundry.  Its  members 
were,  in  one  sense,  an  unpicturesque  group,  and  no  one  at 
the  m  nient  could  have  discovered  in  their  meeting  any 
special  significance.  They  met  under  the  shadow  of  great 


347 


348  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

events.  The  country  was  at  war  with  France.  The 
young  Pretender  was  preparing  to  land  in  Scotland  ;  civil 
war  was  on  the  point  of  breaking  out.  The  Habeas 
Corpus  Act  was  suspended.  One  Cabinet  was  tottering 
to  its  fall,  another  about  to  be  formed. 

It  was  at  the  moment  when  great  events  of  this  scale 
were  in  the  air,  and  amid  the  clash  and  dust  of  stormiest 
politics,  that  this  tiny  group,  most  of  them  utterly  un- 
known men,  met  day  by  day  to  discuss  points  of  theology. 
No  gathering  could  well  seem  more  insignificant.  Yet, 
judged  by  its  historical  consequences,  that  unpicturesque 
gathering  in  the  Foundry  is  the  most  important  even 
1744  witnessed.  It  was  the  first  Methodist  Conference! 
It  created  unconsciously  the  most  remarkable,  and  in 
some  senses  the  most  powerful,  ecclesiastical  council 
modern  Christianity  knows ;  a  machinery  which  is  to- 
day the  effective  instrument  of  government  for  a  Church 
of  nearly  30,000,000  people. 

Who  looks  with  meditative  eyes  at  that  little  cluster  of 
grave-faced  men  may  see  in  it  a  curious  reflex  of  Wesley's 
work  at  the  moment,  and  a  prophecy  of  its  coming 
development. 

Methodism  at  this  stage  was  a  movement  within  the 
Anglican  Church  itself.  It  was  a  spiritual  revival  which 
found  its  inspiration  and  its  leadership  in  a  group  of 
Anglican  ministers.  So  of  the  ten  persons  who  formed 
the  first  Methodist  Conference  six  were,  fitly  enough, 
Anglican  divines.  But  the  movement  was  destined  to 
run  far  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  Anglican  Church. 
It  was  to  give  a  new  development  to  the  Christian 
ministry  itself,  and  to  confer  on  laymen  a  partnership 
in  church  life  and  work  hitherto  unknown.  And  so,  with 
prophetic  fitness,  of  the  ten  men  four  were  lay  preachers, 
upon  whose  heads  no  ordaining  hands  had  yet  been  laid. 

The  laymen,  it  is  true,  were  in  that  first  Conference  only 
by  sufferance.  The  six  clergymen  met  together  first. 
The  earliest  question  asked  was,  "  Shall  any  of  our  lay 
brethren  be  present  at  this  Conference  ? "  When  con- 
templated through  ecclesiastical  spectacles  Wesley's  helpers 
were  still  only  "  lay  brethren,"  although  they  were  given 
up  to  the  work  of  preaching.  The  recorded  and  suffi- 
ciently cautious  answer  to  the  question  is,  "We  agree  to 


THE    CONFERENCE  349 

invite  from  time  to  time  such  as  we  think  proper."  Then 
came  the  question,  "Which  of  them  shall  we  invite  to- 
day ? "  The  answer  is  the  four  names  given  above. 
When  the  second  Conference  was  held  in  Bristol  a  year 
later,  it  consisted  again  of  ten  men,  and  of  these  seven 
were  laymen,  and  one  was  not  even  a  preacher,  and  never 
became  one.  For  a  wide  space  of  sad  years  in  later  time 
laymen  had  no  place  in  Methodist  Conferences;  but  it 
must  never  be  forgotten  that  they  formed  part  of  their 
original  constitution. 

The  first  Conference  makes  its  appearance  amid  the 
fervours  of  a  great  spiritual  work,  and,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, its  temper  was  intensely  earnest.  Its  earliest 
recorded  resolutions  run : — 

"  That  all  things  be  considered  as  in  the  immediate  presence  of 
God.  That  we  meet  with  single  eye,  and  as  little  children,  who 
have  everything  to  learn.  That  every  point  which  is  proposed  may 
be  examined  to  the  foundation." l 

It  was  asked  again:  "How  may  the  time  of  this 
Conference  be  made  more  eminently  a  time  of  watching 
unto  prayer?"  The  answer  is:  "  i.  While  we  are  con- 
versing, let  us  have  an  especial  care  to  set  God  always 
before  us.  2.  In  the  intermediate  hours,  let  us  visit 
none  but  the  sick,  and  spend  all  the  time  that  re- 
mains in  retirement.  3.  Let  us  therein  give  ourselves  to 
prayer  for  one  another,  and  for  a  blessing  upon  this  our 
labour." 

This  Conference  was  plainly  no  mere  debating  society. 
It  was  to  work  as  well  as  argue ! 

The  first  stage  of  the  Conference — it  lasted  six  days 
—was  spent  in  very  keen  and  earnest  discussion  of  the 
question  of  "  What  to  teach  ? "  And  who  reads  the  "  con- 
versations" which  follow,  and  which  range  over  such 
great  subjects  as  justification,  faith,  sanctification,  &c., 
might  well  conclude  that  this  first  of  all  Methodist 
Conferences  was  setting  out  on  a  cruise  in  search  of  a 
creed.  Here  was  a  group  of  divines  painfully  occupied 
in  rediscovering  Christianity !  But  this  is  not  so.  These 
serious-faced  divines  and  laymen  had  no  theology  which 

1  Myles,  p.  36. 


350  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

wandered  outside  the  limits  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles. 
But  what  they  were  doing  was  very  significant.  They 
were  testing  and  re-defining  these  doctrines  in  the  light 
of  conscious  spiritual  experience.  The  definitions  of  justi- 
fication, repentance,  faith,  &c.,  which  they  record,  are 
curiously  simple  and  direct.  Here  are  examples: — 

"Q.  What  is  it  to  be  justified?  A.  To  be  pardoned,  and  re- 
ceived into  God's  favour,  into  such  a  state,  that  if  we  continue 
therein,  we  shall  be  finally  saved.  Q.  Is  Faith  the  condition  of 
Justification  ?  A.  Yes ;  for  every  one  who  believes  is  justi- 
fied. ...  Q.  What  is  Faith?  A.  Faith  in  general  is  a  divine 
supernatural  Elenchos  (demonstration)  of  things  not  seen ;  i.e.  of 
past,  future,  or  spiritual  things  :  it  is  a  spiritual  sight  of  God  and 
the  things  of  God.  Therefore,  Repentance  is  a  low  species  of 
Faith — i.e.  a  supernatural  sense  of  an  offended  God.  Then,  a 
sinner  is  convinced  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  'Christ  loved  me  and 
gave  Himself  for  me.'  This  is  the  faith  by  which  he  is  justified 
or  pardoned  the  moment  he  receives  it.  Immediately  the  same 
Spirit  bears  witness,  '  Thou  art  pardoned.  Thou  hast  redemption 
in  His  blood.'  And  this  is  saving  faith,  whereby  the  love  of 
God  is  shed  abroad  in  His  heart." l 

Here  is  theology,  not  in  the  form  of  metaphysics,  but 
of  verified  human  experience.  Every  syllable  of  these 
definitions  has  for  this  group  of  men  been  tested  in  the 
alembic  of  consciousness. 

It  is  still  amusing  to  notice  how  that  first  Conference 
tried  to  maintain  its  theological  equipoise  amid  the  shocks 
of  controversy.  Thus  it  proceeds  to  painfully  interrogate 
itself,  in  the  form  of  question  and  answer,  as  to  the 
correctness  of  its  own  views : — 

"  Q.  Have  we  not,  unawares,  leaned  too  much  towards  Cal- 
vinism ?  A.  We  are  afraid  we  have.  Q.  Have  we  not  also  leaned 
towards  Antinomianism  ?  A.  We  are  afraid  we  have." 

But  the  second  Conference  met  when  the  horizon  was 
clearer  and  the  heats  of  controversy  had  begun  to  cool. 
It  finds  that  the  pendulum  has  swung  too  far  in  one 
direction.  The  points  of  agreement  rather  than  of  dif- 

1  Myles,  p.  27. 


THE    CONFERENCE  351 

ference  have  now  to  be  emphasised.     So  we  have  a  new 
record : — 

"  Q.  Does  not  the  truth  of  the  Gospel  lie  very  near  both  to 
Calvinism  and  Antinomianism  ?  A.  Indeed  it  does :  as  it  were, 
within  a  hair's-breadth.  So  that  it  is  altogether  foolish  and  sinful, 
because  we  do  not  quite  agree  with  one  or  the  other,  to  run  from 
them  as  far  as  we  can.  Q.  Wherein  may  we  come  to  the  very 
edge  of  Calvinism?  A.  (i)  In  ascribing  all  good  to  the  free 
grace  of  God.  (2)  In  denying  all  natural  freewill,  and  all  power 
antecedent  to  grace ;  and  (3)  In  excluding  all  merit  from  man ; 
even  for  what  he  does  by  the  grace  of  God.  Q.  Wherein  may  we 
come  to  the  edge  of  Antinomianism?  A.  (i)  In  exalting  the 
merits  and  love  of  Christ.  (2)  In  rejoicing  evermore.  Q.  Does 
faith  supersede  (set  aside  the  necessity  of)  holiness  or  good  works  ? 
A.  In  no  wise.  So  far  from  it  that  it  implies  both,  as  a  cause  does 
its  effects." 

Where  else  in  history  can  we  find  a  company  of  theo- 
logians, just  emerging  from  a  controversy,  so  honestly 
anxious  to  sober  their  own  views  in  this  wise  fashion  ! 
How  intensely  practical,  and  how  closely  personal,  again, 
was  the  test  by  which  these  early  Methodist  preachers 
tried  their  theology,  may  be  judged  from  a  fragment  of 
one  of  the  conversations  in  the  Conference  of  1745,  at 
Bristol  :— 

"  Q.  Do  we  empty  men  of  their  own  righteousness,  as  we  did 
at  first?  ...  A.  This  was  at  first  one  of  our  principal  points. 
And  it  ought  to  be  so  still.  For,  till  all  other  foundations  are 
overturned,  they  cannot  build  upon  Christ.  Q.  Did  we  not  then 
purposely  throw  them  into  convictions  1  Into  strong  sorrow  and 
fear?  Nay,  did  we  not  strive  to  make  them  inconsolable?  Re- 
fusing to  be  comforted.  A.  We  did,  and  so  we  should  do  still. 
For  the  stronger  the  conviction,  the  speedier  is  the  deliverance. 
And  none  so  soon  receive  the  peace  of  God  as  those  who  steadily 
refuse  all  other  comfort.  Q.  Let  us  consider  a  particular  case. 
Were  you,  Jonathan  Reeves,  before  you  received  the  peace  of  God, 
convinced  that  notwithstanding  all  you  did,  or  could  do,  you  were 
in  a  state  of  damnation  ?  J.  R.  :  I  was  convinced  of  it  as  fully 
as  that  I  am  now  alive.  Q.  Are  you  sure  that  conviction  was 
from  God?  J.  R.  :  I  can  have  no  doubt  it  was.  Q.  What  do 
you  mean  by  a  state  of  damnation  ?  J.  R. :  A  state  wherein  if  a 
man  dies  he  perisheth  for  ever.  Q.  How  did  this  conviction  end? 


352  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

J.  R.  :  I  had  first  a  strong  hope  that  God  would  deliver  me,  and 
this  brought  a  degree  of  peace.  But  I  had  not  that  solid  peace  of 
God  till  Christ  was  revealed  in  me." l 

These,  it  is  clear,  are  theologians  of  quite  a  new  type. 
They  keep  their  feet  on  the  solid  earth.  The  articles  in 
their  creed  beat  in  perfect  rhythm  with  the  facts  of  their 
consciousness.  And  yet  they  recognise  quite  frankly  the 
law  of  development  in  their  beliefs.  Thus  the  second 
Conference  asks  :— 

"  Q.  Wherein  does  our  doctrine  now  differ  from  that  we  preached 
when  at  Oxford  ?  A.  Chiefly  in  these  two  points:  (i)  We  then 
knew  nothing  of  that  righteousness  of  faith,  in  justification ;  nor 
(2)  of  the  nature  of  faith  itself,  as  implying  a  consciousness  of 
pardon." 

The  first  Conference  discussed  some  questions  which 
belong  to  the  realm  of  casuistry,  such  as :  "  How  far  the 
Christian  man  may  submit  his  judgment  to  others;" 
"  Whether  it  is  lawful  to  bear  arms ; "  "  How  far  it  is  a 
duty  to  obey  a  bishop,"  &c.  It  discussed  at  length  "  The 
Society  and  its  Officers,"  and  prepared  rules  which  are 
practically  the  marching  orders  for  the  Methodist  soldiery 
for  all  time,  the  translation  into  spiritual  terms  of,  say, 
Lord  Wolseley's  "Soldier's  Pocket-feook."  But  one  sub- 
ject debated  was  of  what  may  be  called  prophetic  import- 
ance— the  relation  of  the  new  movement  to  the  Anglican 
Church,  and  the  probable  developments  in  those  relations 
which  lay  in  the  future.  The  debate  went  with  admirable 
directness  to  this,  the  most  important  of  all  problems : — 

"  Q.  Do  we  separate  from  the  Church  ?  A.  We  conceive  not : 
we  hold  communion  therewith,  for  conscience  sake,  by  constantly 
attending  both  the  Word  preached,  and  the  sacraments  adminis- 
tered therein.  Q.  What  then  do  they  mean  who  say,  '  You 
separate  from  the  Church '  1  A.  We  certainly  cannot  tell.  Per- 
haps they  have  no  determinate  meaning,  unless  by  the  Church 
they  mean  themselves — i.e.  that  part  of  the  clergy  who  accuse  us 
of  preaching  false  doctrine.  And  it  is  sure  we  do  herein  separate 
from  them,  by  maintaining  that  which  they  deny.  Q.  Is  it  not 
probable  that  your  hearers  after  your  death  will  be  scattered  into 
all  sects  and  parties  ?  Or,  that  they  will  form  themselves  into  a 

1  Myles,  p.  47. 


THE   CONFERENCE  353 

distinct  sect?  A.  i.  We  are  persuaded  that  the  body  of  our 
hearers  will,  even  after  our  death,  remain  in  the  Church  unless 
they  be  thrust  out.  2.  We  believe,  notwithstanding,  either  that 
they  will  be  thrust  out,  or  that  they  will  leaven  the  whole  Church. 
3.  We  do,  and  will  do,  all.  we  can  to  prevent  those  consequences 
which  are  supposed  likely  to  happen  after  our  death.  4.  But  we 
cannot,  with  a  good  conscience,  neglect  the  present  opportunity  of 
saving  souls  while  we  live,  for  fear  of  consequences  which  may 
possibly  or  probably  happen  after  we  are  dead."  l 

It  would  be  difficult  to  surpass  for  cool-headed  and  prac- 
tical wisdom  the  words  of  that  closing  resolution. 

No  one  can  read  the  minutes;|of  that  first  Conference 
without  seeing  that  already — though  quite  unconsciously 
as  far  as  the  persons  most  affected  were  concerned — a 
Church,  singularly  practical  and  complete  in  organisation, 
was  crystallising  into  shape.  All  the  permanent  features 
of  Methodist  organisation  are  clearly  visible  within  five 
years  of  Wesley  preaching  his  first  open-air  sermon.  That 
first  Conference,  for  example,  asked  the  question :  "  What 
officers  belong  to  this  Society?"  and  the  answer  shows 
how  nearly  complete,  even  at  that  stage,  was  the  organisa- 
tion of  Methodism.  As  early  as  1 747  Wesley  laid  down 
"  Rules  for  the  Stewards  of  the  Methodist  Societies,"  and 
these  are  an  exquisite  reflex  not  only  of  his  business 
sagacity,  but  of  his  consideration  for  the  poor.  They 
might  very  happily  govern  the  Church  affairs  of  Meth- 
odism to-day : — 

"  i.  You  are  to  be  men  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  of  wisdom, 
that  you  may  do  all  things  in  a  manner  acceptable  to  God. 

2.  You  are  weekly  to, transact  the  temporal  affairs  of  the  Society. 

3.  You  are  to  begin  and  end  every  meeting  with  earnest  prayer 
to  God  for  a  blessing  on  all  your  undertakings.     4.  You  are  to  do 
nothing  without  the  consent  of  the  minister,  either  actually  had  or 
reasonably  presumed.     5.  You  are  to  consider  whenever  you  meet, 
'  God  is   here.'     Therefore   be   serious.     Utter   no   railing   word. 
Speak  as  in  His  presence,  and  to  the  glory  of  His  great  Name. 
6.  When  anything  is  debated,  let  one  at  once  stand  up  and  speak, 
the  rest  giving  attention.     And  let  him  speak  just  loud  enough  to 
be  heard,  in  love  and  in  the  spirit  of  meekness.     7.  In  all  debates, 
you  are  to  watch  over  your  spirits,  avoiding,  as  fire,  all  clamour 

1  Myles,  p.  47. 


354  WESLEY   AND    HIS   CENTURY 

and  contention,  being  swift  to  hear,  slow  to  speak;  in  honour 
every  man  preferring  another  before  himself.  8.  If  you  cannot 
relieve,  do  not  grieve  the  poor.  Give  them  soft  words,  if  nothing 
else.  Abstain  from  either  sour  looks  or  harsh  words.  Let  them 
be  glad  to  come,  even  though  they  should  go  empty  away.  9.  Put 
yourselves  in  the  place  of  every  poor  man,  and  deal  with  him  as 
you  would  God  should  deal  with  you." l 

Some  of  the  early  agencies  of  Methodism  have  not 
survived  the  test  of  time.  The  band  meetings,  for  example, 
represent  the  swing  of  the  spiritual  pendulum  in  a  danger- 
ous direction.  They  came  perilously  near  the  confessional, 
and  had  some  of  the  mischiefs  of  the  confessional.  They 
have  disappeared.  But  the  main  features  of  Methodism, 
as  Wesley  even  at  this  early  stage  of  his  work  shaped 
them,  have  survived,  and  amongst  these  the  most  con- 
spicuous is  the  Conference,  whose  genesis  is  here  de- 
scribed. A  whole  sisterhood  of  such  Conferences  is  in 
energetic  operation  to-day ;  and  each  remains,  in  substance 
if  not  in  detail,  faithful  to  the  original  type. 

The  Conference,  indeed,  as  a  bit  of  ecclesiastical 
machinery,  is  perhaps  the  most  original  contribution  that 
Methodism  has  made  to  church  history.  Methodism 
itself  to-day  would  be  a  mere  jumble  of  unrelated  frag- 
ments but  for  this  great  court,  which  is  at  once  the 
symbol  and  the  instrument  of  its  unity.  In  the  Methodist 
system  the  Conference  is  the  thinking  organ  of  the 
Church ;  the  instrument  of  government ;  the  nerve-centre 
that  co-ordinates  all  the  forces  of  the  spiritual  organism, 
and  puts  them  under  the  government  of  a  single  purpose. 
No  other  council  known  to  religious  history  has  quite  the 
functions  of  the  Methodist  Conference.  It  is  a  parliament 
clothed  with  all  the  functions  of  legislation;  a  cabinet 
of  administration;  a  court  of  discipline;  the  machinery 
by  which  the  great  system  of  the  itinerancy,  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  pastorate  of  the  Methodist  Churches, 
is  regulated.  Hidden  in  the  itinerancy,  it  may  be  added, 
is  a  silent,  unplanned,  almost  unrecognised  but  most 
effective  instrument  of  discipline;  a  force  which  secures 
all  the  ends  without  the  forms  of  disciplinary  process, 
and  which  goes  far  to  explain  the  doctrinal  purity  of  the 
Methodist  Church. 

1  Myles,  p.  36. 


THE   CONFERENCE  355 

Methodist  Churches  exist  to-day  under  every  sky,  and 
they  are  naturally  affected  in  many  details  by  their  social 
and  geographical  environment.  In  Great  Britain,  for  ex- 
ample, the  parent  Conference  itself  runs  some  risk  of 
suffering,  in  order  and  energy,  by  mere  congestion  of 
numbers.  A  public  meeting  of  nearly  a  thousand  men, 
all  trained  talkers,  is  the  worst  instrument  for  the  dis- 
charge of  business  the  wit  of  man  ever  invented,  or  the 
patience  of  man  ever  suffered.  We  must  go  to  Poland 
with  its  "liberum  veto"  for  its  analogue.  In  the  British 
Conference,  by  the  mere  necessity  of  its  scale,  the  work 
has  to  be  done  by  committees;  and  the  Conference  it- 
self, except  on  broad  matters  of  policy,  is  practically  a 
mere  registering  instrument  for  its  own  committees.  This 
is  not  a  wholesome  state  of  things,  for  it  represents  a 
certain  divorce  of  power  from  responsibility;  the  com- 
mittees have  power  without  responsibility ;  the  Conference 
has  responsibility  without  power.  The  system,  in  a  word, 
is  apt  to  become  Venetian,  and  to  give  power  to  a  few 
who  meet  and  decide  without  the  tonic  of  publicity. 

In  the  United  States  the  episcopal  system  modifies  the 
Conference ;  yet  the  bishops  are  the  creation  of  the  Confer- 
ence and  remain  its  servants.  In  Canada  and  Australia, 
the  mere  scale  of  geography  has  modified  the  structure  and 
functions  of  the  Conference.  In  Australia,  for  example, 
the  annual  Conferences  are  purely  administrative  bodies. 
The  General  Conference,  which  meets  every  four  years,  is 
a  representative  body,  acts  as  a  court  of  review,  and  is  the 
sole  depository  of  legislative  power.  The  separation  of 
functions  represents,  scientifically,  the  highest  stages  of  any 
organism.  And  in  actual  practice  the  separation  of  the 
administrative  and  legislative  functions  in  the  Conference 
is  attended  with  many  happy  results.  Administration  is 
more  effective  than  under  the  old  system ;  while  the  fact 
that  legislation  is  confined  to  a  body  which  meets  only  once 
in  four  years  has  some  obvious  advantages.  The  oppor- 
tunity of  making  legislative  experiments  comes  only  at 
long  intervals. 

But  under  all  skies,  and  all  geographical  and  social  con- 
ditions, the  Methodist  Conference  still  bears  the  stamp  of 
the  providential  impulse  from  which  it  sprang,  and  of 
the  masterful  will,  and  the  statesman-like  intellect,  of  the 


356  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

great  leader  who  gave  it  form.  It  is  not  a  mere  debating 
society.  It  is  not  a  bit  of  unqualified  democracy.  Laymen, 
it  is  true,  as  far  as  the  finances  and  business  interests  of 
the  Church  are  concerned,  have  been  taken  into  frankest 
partnership  ;  but,  speaking  generally,  the  pastoral  office  is 
strictly  conserved,  and  all  that  relates  to  the  training  and 
discipline  of  ministers,  and  their  distribution  over  the 
pastoral  charges  of  the  Church,  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
ministers. 

And  where  in  all  ecclesiastical  history  is  to  be  found  so 
effective  an  instrument  of  government  ?  The  great  Coun- 
cils of  the  Middle  Ages,  like  so  many  modern  ecclesiastical 
assemblies,  were  in  the  main  huge  debating  societies. 
They  emerge  in  the  crisis  of  some  heresy ;  they  settle — 
or  fail  to  settle — some  dispute  about  doctrine,  and  they 
vanish.  Under  an  episcopal  form  of  Church  government 
the  Church  Council  can  hardly  have  any  other  than  de- 
bating functions.  Churches,  again,  of  the  Congregational 
type,  or  Presbyterian  Churches,  with  a  fixed  pastorate,  can 
have  no  governing  court  with  a  range,  both  of  unchallenged 
authority  and  of  practical  work,  which  belongs  to  the 
Methodist  Conference.  In  its  Conference  the  Methodist 
system  reaches  its  natural  and  highest  expression.  It 
is  a  body  which  does  not  merely  reign  ;  it  governs.  And 
it  governs  effectively  and  without  challenge. 


CHAPTER  VI 

A   YEAR    OF    CRISIS 

THE  year  1764  is,  in  many  respects,  a  critical  period  in  the 
evolution  of  the  Methodist  Church.  It  marks  the  close  of 
one  stage  and  the  beginning  of  another.  It  was  twenty- 
five  years  since  Wesley  stood  on  the  hillside  at  Kingswood 
and  preached  his  first  sermon  in  the  open-air.  For  a 
quarter  of  a  century  the  Revival  had  now  flowed  on  with- 
out pause  or  ebb,  and  it  was  visibly  reshaping  the  religious 
life  of  England.  Wesley's  societies  were  scattered  all  over 
the  United  Kingdom,  each  society  a  little  germinating 
point  of  spiritual  life.  Wesley  had  gathered  round  him- 
self, and  was  training  in  his  helpers,  a  new  order  of 
Christian  workers,  in  some  respects  curiously  like  the 
preaching  friars  of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  the  "poor 
preachers "  whom  Wycliffe  sent  out ;  but  with  a  better 
creed,  a  gladder  message,  and  a  wiser  organisation  than 
either.  There  is  no  other  spiritual  movement  recorded 
in  history  since  apostolic  days  that  shows  from  its  very 
birth  such  sustained  energy,  and  such  power  of  continual 
advance,  as  did  the  movement  of  which  Whitefield  and 
the  Wesleys  were  the  leaders. 

But  twenty-five  years  in  such  a  work  make  up  a  wide 
space  of  time,  and  bring  with  them  many  changes. 
Wesley's  comrades,  one  by  one,  had  dropped  from  his 
side.  Whitefield  was  broken  in  health.  His  American 
orphanage  filled  an  almost  absurdly  wide  space  in  his 
mental  horizon.  He  had  never  attempted  to  build  up  an 
enduring  spiritual  structure.  The  crowd,  swayed  by  his 
rushing  speech  as  a  field  of  yellow,  rustling  corn  is  swayed 
by  the  wind,  was  his  ideal ;  it  represented  his  one  effec- 
tive form  of  work.  To  patiently  weave  over  the  surface 
of  the  three  kingdoms  a  great  network  of  tiny  societies 
was  a  task  quite  alien  to  his  genius.  As  he  himself  said, 
"  I  should  but  weave  a  Penelope's  web  if  I  formed  societies, 

357 


358  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

and  if  I  should  form  them  I  have  no  proper  assistants 
to  take  care  of  them.  I  intend,  therefore,  to  go  about 
preaching  the  Gospel  to  every  creature."  But  as  a  matter 
of  fact  Whitefield  no  longer  had  physical  energy  enough 
for  his  preaching  services,  and  four  years  later  he  died. 

Charles  Wesley,  too,  was  falling  out  of  the  work.  His 
health  was  shaken.  He  was  married,  and  had  now  the 
cares  of  a  family.  The  poet  in  him  had  largely  taken  the 
place  of  the  preacher,  and  the  evangelist  gave  place  more 
and  more  to  the  High  Churchman.  There  were  some 
twenty-seven  years  of  strenuous  work  yet  before  Wesley, 
but  it  was  to  be  lonely  work.  From  1764  he  stands 
out  a  solitary  figure,  sole  leader  and  representative  of  the 
Great  Revival. 

At  this  point,  too,  the  relation  of  the  work  to  the 
Church  of  England  becomes  more  definite.  The  work 
began  within  the  Church  ;  its  originator  and  leaders  were 
Anglican  clergymen ;  and  it  was  one  of  the  happy  pos- 
sibilities of  the  Revival  that  it  might  have  remained  a 
movement  within  the  Church,  transforming  its  whole 
spirit  and  outlook.  The  onfall  of  the  bishops  had  helped 
to  wreck  this  possibility,  and  at  this  stage  in  Wesley's 
career  it  had  become  clear,  even  to  the  reluctant  eyes  of 
Wesley  himself,  that  the  Anglican  Church  and  the  Re- 
vival were  to  flow  in  different  channels. 

Wesley's  own  policy  was  definite,  consistent,  and  per- 
fectly intelligible.  He  would  not  by  any  act  of  his  own 
separate  from  the  Church.  He  set  in  his  own  person  a 
shining  example  of  loyalty  to  its  services.  He  held  his 
followers  to  them  with  all  the  energy  of  his  masterful  will. 
He  whipped  them  away  from  all  thought  of  dissent  with 
constant  rebuke.  But  he  held  separation  from  the  Church 
to  be — not  unlawful — but  only  inexpedient.  From  the 
first,  indeed,  he  saw  with  clearest  vision  that  separation 
would  probably  come;  nay,  that  under  some  circum- 
stances it  ought  to  come.  He  only  hoped  it  would  not  be 
till  he  was  dead. 

In  his  first  Conference  (in  1744),  a  Conference  in  which, 
out  of  ten  persons,  six  were  Anglican  clergymen,  the 
whole  case  is  stated,  as  we  have  seen,  with  luminous 
clearness,  and  with  almost  prophetic  foresight.  In  the 
Conference  of  1746  the  questions  of  a  National  Church 


A   YEAR   OF   CRISIS  359 

and  of  the  divine  right  of  episcopacy  were  again  dis- 
cussed at  length,  and  answered  once  more  in  a  strongly 
anti-sacerdotal  sense. 

But  there  were  forces  working  both  ways.  In  the 
Conference  of  1752  Charles  Wesley  drew  up,  and  per- 
suaded the  leading  members  of  the  Conference  to  sign, 
a  remarkable  pledge,  the  final  clause  of  which  was  a 
promise  "never  to  leave  the  communion  of  the  Church 
of  England  without  the  consent  of  all  those  whose  names 
were  subjoined."  John  Wesley,  who  was  always  less  of  a 
Churchman  than  Charles,  denned  his  position  four  years 
later  in  the  following  terms : — 

"  I  still  believe  the  episcopal  form  of  Church  government  to  be 
scriptural  and  apostolical.  I  mean  well  agreeing  with  the  practice 
and  writings  of  the  Apostles.  But  that  it  is  prescribed  in  Scripture 
I  do  not  believe.  This  opinion,  which  I  once  zealously  espoused, 
I  have  been  heartily  ashamed  of  ever  since  I  read  Bishop  Stilling- 
fleet's  'Irenicon.'  I  think  he  has  unanswerably  proved  that 
neither  Christ  nor  His  Apostles  prescribe  any  particular  form  of 
Church  government ;  and  that  the  plea  of  divine  right  for  diocesan 
episcopacy  was  never  heard  of  in  the  primitive  Church. 

"  I  would  take  some  pains  to  recover  any  one  from  error,  or  to  re- 
concile him  to  our  Church,  I  mean  to  the  Church  of  England ;  from 
which  I  do  not  separate  yet,  and  probably  never  shall ;  but  I 
would  take  much  more  pains  to  recover  any  one  from  sin." l 

In  the  Conference  of  the  same  year  (1756)  again  it  is 
recorded :  "  We  largely  considered  the  necessity  of  keep- 
ing in  the  Church,  and  using  the  clergy  with  tenderness. 
And  there  was  no  dissenting  voice.  God  gave  us  all  to 
be  of  one  mind  and  of  one  judgment." 

Wesley  himself  adds :  "  My  brother  and  I  closed  the 
Conference  by  a  solemn  declaration  of  our  purpose  never 
to  separate  from  the  Church.  And  all  our  brethren 
concurred  therein."  * 

In  1758  Wesley  published  "Twelve  Reasons  against 
Separating  from  the  Church  of  England."  The  sum 
of  the  whole  runs:  "Whether  it  be  lawful  or  not 
(which  itself  may  be  disputed,  being  not  so  clear  a  point 
as  some  may  imagine),  it  is  by  no  means  expedient  for 
us  to  separate  from  the  Established  Church."3  Charles 

1  Tyerman,  vol.  ii.  p.  244.  2  Myles,  p.  So.  3  Ibid.,  p.  81. 


360  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Wesley,  always  on  this  point  more  vehement  than  his 
brother,  appends  to  the  "reasons"  a  statement  which 
runs : — 

"  I  subscribe  to  them  with  all  my  heart.  Only  with  regard  to 
the  first :  I  am  quite  clear,  that  it  is  neither  expedient,  nor  lawful, 
for  me  to  separate,  and  I  never  had  the  least  inclination  or 
temptation  so  to  do.  My  affection  for  the  Church  is  as  strong 
as  ever ;  and  I  clearly  see  my  calling,  which  is  to  live  and  die  in 
her  communion.  This,  therefore,  I  am  determined  to  do,  the 
Lord  being  my  helper." 1 

In  a  private  letter  written  at  the  same  time,  he  says : 
"  I  should  have  broken  off  from  the  Methodists  and  my 
brother,  in  1752,  but  for  the  agreement.  I  think  every 
preacher  should  sign  that  agreement,  or  leave  us." 2 

Nothing  can  be  clearer  in  all  this  history  than  Wesley's 
personal  loyalty  to  the  Church  of  England,  and  his  deep, 
and  even  passionate,  desire  to  retain  his  converts  within 
the  boundaries  of  that  Church.  But  the  resistless  logic  of 
events  made  changes  inevitable.  Wesley  was  losing  one  by 
one  his  spiritual  allies  in  the  Church  itself.  The  Bishops 
were,  from  the  first,  openly  hostile,  and  no  bond  of  interest 
or  sympathy  linked  the  Church  any  longer  to  the  Revival. 
Wesley  in  1756  was  urged  by  his  Church  friends  to  dis- 
band his  army  of  itinerating  preachers,  and  to  hand  over 
his  societies  to  the  care  of  the  parish  clergy.  He  dis- 
cussed the  proposal  with  great  calmness  and  frankness  :— 

'  First,  who  shall  feed  them  with  the  milk  of  the  Word  1  The 
ministers  of  their  parishes  ?  Alas  !  they  cannot ;  they  themselves 
neither  know,  nor  live,  nor  teach  the  Gospel."  As  to  his  helpers, 
Wesley  adds,  "  Here  is  another  difficulty  still :  what  authority  have 
I  to  forbid  their  doing  what  I  believe  God  has  called  them  to  do  1 
I  apprehend,  indeed,  that  there  ought,  if  possible,  to  be  both  an 
outward  and  inward  call  to  this  work  ;  yet,  if  one  of  the  two  be 
supposed  wanting,  I  had  rather  want  the  outward  than  the  inward 
call.  I  rejoice  that  I  am  called  to  preach  the  Gospel  both  by  God 
and  man.  Yet,  I  acknowledge,  I  had  rather  have  the  Divine 
without  the  human,  than  the  human  without  the  Divine  call."3 

He  had  at  that  time  thirty-four  societies  in  Cornwall 
alone,  and  he  asks :  "  Will  they  prosper  as  well  when  they 

1  Myles,  p.  84.  s  Tyerman,  vol.  ii.  p.  245. 

*  Tyerman,  ii.  p.  250. 


A    YEAR    OF    CRISIS  361 

are  left  as  sheep  without  a  shepherd  ?  The  experiment 
has  been  tried  again  and  again,  and  always  with  the  same 
event." 

In  1764  Wesley  wrote  his  famous  circular  letter  to  all 
the  evangelical  clergy  who  might  be  supposed  to  sym- 
pathise with  the  Revival.  The  letter  is  a  noble  plea  for 
patience,  toleration,  union,  and  help.  "  Why,"  he  asks,  in 
conclusion,  "cannot  we  think  well  of  and  honour  one 
another?  Wish  all  good,  all  grace,  all  gifts,  all  success, 
yea,  greater  than  our  own,  to  each  other  ?  Expect  God 
will  answer  our  wish,  rejoice  in  every  appearance  thereof, 
and  praise  Him  for  it?  Readily  believe  good  of  each 
other,  as  readily  as  we  once  believed  evil?"  That  fine 
appeal  was  addressed  to  betwixt  fifty  and  sixty  clergymen, 
all  of  whom,  by  character  and  religious  experience,  were 
in  sympathy  with  Wesley ;  but  only  three  vouchsafed  an 
answer ;  one  of  them  being  Perronet,  Vicar  of  Shoreham, 
who  was  one  of  Wesley's  closest  friends.  If  Wesley's 
friends  stood  aloof  in  this  spirit,  the  mood  of  the  Church 
at  large  may  be  guessed  ! 

Some  twelve  clergy  were  present  at  the  Conference  of 
1764;  but  they  were  present  merely  to  urge  that  Wesley 
should  withdraw  the  preachers  from  every  parish  where 
there  was  a  clergyman  "  of  a  religious  spirit "  !  Charles 
Wesley  supported  the  proposal,  and,  in  the  words  of  John 
Pawson,  who  was  present,  "honestly  told  us  that  if  he  was 
a  settled  minister  in  any  particular  place,  we  should  not 
preach  there."  To  whom  Mr.  Hampson  replied,  "  I  would 
preach  there  and  never  ask  your  leave,  and  should  have 
as  good  a  right  to  do  so  as  you  would  have."  The  new 
wine,  it  was  clear,  could  not  be  permanently  held  in  the 
old  bottles ! 

It  may  be  added  that  a  great  wave  of  spiritual  life, 
which  during  this  period  was  sweeping  through  the 
Methodist  societies,  and  lifting  them  up  to  a  higher  level 
of  energy  and  gladness,  had  the  curious  effect  of  widening 
the  breach  between  Wesley  and  his  natural  allies  in  the 
Anglican  Church.  At  the  end  of  1762,  Wesley  writes : 
"  Many  years  ago  my  brother  frequently  said,  '  Your  day 
of  Pentecost  is  not  fully  come.  But  I  doubt  not,  it  will. 
And  you  will  then  hear  of  persons  sanctified,  as  frequently 
as  you  do  now  of  persons  justified.  Any  unprejudiced 


362  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

person  who  has  read  the  accounts  in  my  Journals  may 
observe  that  it  was  now  fully  come.' " l 

"  The  true  day  of  Pentecost "  had,  indeed,  come  for  Wes- 
ley and  his  followers.  Sanctification  had  been  hitherto  a 
doctrine  debated  by  many,  but  an  experience  realised  by 
few.  At  this  period,  however,  for  thousands  the  doctrine 
had  become  a  true  spiritual  experience.  Wesley's  journals 
are  full  of  records  of  the  spiritual  work  in  triumphant 
progress. 

Now  the  doctrine  itself,  as  yet,  lacked  clear  definition. 
Wesley,  in  formal  terms,  never  claimed  sanctification  as 
his  personal  experience ;  but  he  reached  at  last  a  defini- 
tion of  the  doctrine  which  is  marked  by  admirable  simpli- 
city and  clearness.  He  defined  it  partly  by  negatives  : — 

"Absolute  and  infallible  perfection  I  never  contended  for  ;  sin- 
less perfection  I  do  not  contend  for,  seeing  it  is  not  Scriptural. 
A  perfection  such  as  enables  a  person  to  fulfil  the  whole  law,  and 
so  need  not  the  merits  of  Christ,  I  do  not  acknowledge.  I  do 
now,  and  always  did,  protest  against  it." 

Then,  translating  the  doctrine  into  positive  terms,  he 
says : — • 

"  By  Christian  perfection  I  mean  (as  I  have  said  again  and 
again)  the  so  loving  God  and  our  neighbour  as  to  '  rejoice  ever- 
more, pray  without  ceasing,  and  in  everything  give  thanks.'  He 
that  experiences  this  is  Scrip turally  perfect." 

But  all  good  things  have  their  characteristic  risks,  and 
this  doctrine  of  sanctification,  or  "  perfection,"  ran,  or  was 
apt  to  run — especially  with  the  half-taught  and  ill-balanced 
— into  fanatical  extremes.  This  happened  in  the  London 
societies,  and  some  of  Wesley's  most  trusted  helpers 
were  carried  away.  George  Bell,  an  ex-Life  Guardsman, 
was  one  of  his  most  valued  comrades.  Long  afterwards 
Wesley  records  how  for  years  he  had  found  in  Bell  a  loyal 
sympathy  and  helpfulness  no  one  else  yielded  him.  Max- 
field  was  the  earliest  of  his  helpers,  and  one  held  in  special 
confidence.  Both  these  were  at  this  moment  swept  away 
in  a  wave  of  fanaticism.  Bell  ran  to  the  wildest  extremes. 
He  fixed  a  day  for  the  end  of  the  world ;  openly  renounced 

1  Myles,  p.  87. 


A   YEAR   OF   CRISIS  363 

Wesley,  and  drew  off  many  of  the  members.  All  this,  of 
course,  shocked  the  sober  Anglicans.  Wesley  appealed  to 
his  brother  Charles  to  come  up  to  London  to  help  him  to 
keep  the  societies  steady,  but  the  appeal  was  vain.  He 
wrote  again,  in  a  key  of  mingled  sadness  but  of  grim 
resolve : — "  I  perceive  verba  fiunt  mortuo  ;  so  I  say  no 
more  about  your  coming  to  London.  Here  stand  I ;  and 
I  shall  stand,  with  or  without  human  help,  if  God  is 
with  us." 

Wesley,  left  to  himself,  dealt  with  the  trouble  with  fine 
courage  and  decision.  He  expelled  Bell  from  the  society, 
and  publicly  denounced  his  follies ;  but  he  could  not  arrest 
the  mischievous  effect  of  this  outburst  of  extravagance  in 
the  societies.  It  widened  fatally  the  breach  betwixt  him- 
self and  those  who  had  been  his  closest  friends. 

Wesley  felt  keenly  the  desertion  of  his  old  comrades. 
He  writes  on  March  20,  1763,  to  Lady  Huntingdon,  in  a 
tone  of  bitterness  rarely  audible  in  his  letters  : — 

"  By  the  mercy  of  God,  I  am  still  alive,  and  following  the  work 
to  which  He  has  called  me,  although  without  any  help,  even  in 
the  most  trying  times,  from  those  of  whom  I  might  have  expected 
it.  Their  voice  seemed  to  be  rather,  '  Down  with  him,  down  with 
him  ;  even  to  the  ground.'  I  mean  (for  I  use  no  circumlocution) 
Mr.  Madan,  Mr.  Haweis,  Mr.  Berridge,  and  (I  am  sorry  to  say  it) 
Mr.  Whitefield.  Only  Mr.  Roraaine  has  shown  a  truly  sympathis- 
ing spirit,  and  acted  the  part  of  a  brother.  As  to  the  prophecies 
of  these  poor  wild  men,  George  Bell  and  half-a-dozen  more,  I  am 
not  a  jot  more  accountable  for  them  than  Mr.  Whitefield,  having 
never  countenanced  them  in  any  degree,  but  opposed  them  from  the 
moment  I  heard  them ;  neither  have  these  extravagances  any 
foundation  in  any  doctrine  which  I  teach." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  one  loyal  friend  whom  Wesley 
thought  he  still  had,  Romaine,  had  by  this  time  forsaken 
him  too.  Lady  Huntingdon  sent  on  to  him  the  letter  from 
which  the  preceding  extract  is  taken ;  Romaine  wrote  in 
reply : — 

"Enclosed  is  poor  Mr.  John  Wesley's  letter.  The  contents  of 
it,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  surprised  me ;  for  no  one  has  spoken 
more  freely  of  what  is  now  passing  among  the  people  than  myself 
I  pity  Mr.  John  from  my  heart.  His  societies  are  in  great  con- 


364  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

fusion  ;  and  the  point,  which  brought  •  them  into  the  wilderness  of 
rant  and  madness,  is  still  insisted  on  as  much  as  ever.  I  fear  the 
end  of  this  delusion." 

It  is  clear  from  all  this,  that,  at  a  moment  of  crisis, 
when  his  societies  were  in  peril  of  being  broken  asunder 
by  extravagances  of  life  and  doctrine,  and  when  his  most 
trusted  helpers  were  failing  him,  Wesley  was  abandoned 
by  his  allies  amongst  the  Anglican  clergy,  even  his  brother 
for  the  moment  failing  him.  Wesley  bore  the  cruel  burden 
thus  cast  upon  him  with  noble  resolution,  and  the  crisis 
passed.  But  the  incident  had  enduring  results.  It  helped 
to  decide  the  whole  relation  of  Methodism  to  the  Church 
of  England.  Wesley  yet  remained,  in  his  own  person  and 
sympathies,  stubbornly  loyal  to  the  Church.  The  spiritual 
movement  of  which  he  was  now  the  sole  head  should  not, 
if  he  could  help  it,  drift  into  dissent.  But  the  last  ties 
that  bound  it  to  the  Church  were  being  cut — on  the  side 
of  the  Church  itself ! 

If  any  one  wishes  an  illustration  of  the  general  temper 
of  the  Anglican  Church  to  this  great  spiritual  movement 
after  it  had  been  nearly  thirty  years  in  operation,  and  was 
visibly  transfiguring  the  moral  life  of  England,  let  him 
take  the  following  incident:  On  March  9,  1768,  six 
students  were  expelled  from  the  University  of  Oxford  for 
holding  Methodistical  tenets,  and  taking  upon  them  to 

Eray,  and  to  read  and  expound  the  Scriptures  in  a  private 
ouse.  The  head  of  the  House  to  which  the  students 
belonged  defended  their  doctrine  from  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles,  and  spoke  in  the  highest  terms  of  the  piety  and 
high  character  of  the  accused  men,  but  in  vain.  The 
principal  of  the  College,  after  sentence  had  been  pro- 
nounced, said  that  as  these  six  gentlemen  were  expelled 
for  having  too  much  religion,  it  would  be  very  proper  to 
inquire  into  the  conduct  of  some  who  had  too  little 
What  fact  can  be  more  significant  than  that  so  late  as 
1768  students  of  high  character  were  expelled  from  the 
University  of  Oxford  for  no  other  offence  than  that  of 
"  holding  Methodistical  tenets ! " 

The  difficulty  created  by  the  failure  of  his  clerical 
allies  explains  another  much-debated  step  which  Wesley 
took  at  this  time.  The  larger  societies  were  accustomed 


A    YEAR   OF   CRISIS  365 

to  receive  the  sacrament  in  their  own  chapels,  but  it  was 
physically  impossible  for  Wesley  himself  to  do  this  work. 
No  clergyman  would  any  longer  help  him,  and  Wesley 
had  the  High  Churchman's  invincible  reluctance  to  allow 
any  unordained  preacher  to  administer  the  sacraments. 
His  first  helper,  Maxfield,  had  been  ordained  by  an  Irish 
bishop,  and  was  accustomed  to  administer  the  sacrament 
in  London  during  Wesley's  absence,  but  even  Maxfield 
had  now  forsaken  him.  At  this  moment  a  bishop  of  the 
Greek  Church  named  Erasmus  was  in  London.  Wesley 
took  pains  to  ascertain  that  his  credentials  were  genuine, 
and  then  consented  to  some  of  his  helpers  receiving 
ordination  from  him. 

But  this  was  only  a  temporary  expedient ;  it  carried 
with  it  some  strange  theological  implications,  and  it 
created  new  and  instant  troubles.  Charles  Wesley  was 
filled  with  unappeasable  anger ;  and  this,  in  turn,  kindled 
amongst  the  little  group  of  ordained  helpers  an  answering 
resentment.  One  of  them,  John  Jones,  whom  Wesley 
valued  most,  and  on  whom  the  Greek  bishop  had  laid  his 
hands,  left  him,  and  accepted  orders  in  the  Anglican 
Church.  Another  of  the  ordained  men,  Stanniforth,  re- 
cords in  his  Journal : — 

"In  the  year  1764  I  was  sent  for  by  Mr.  W.  to  his  house.  The 
messenger  told  me  he  wanted  to  speak  with  me,  and  I  must  come 
immediately.  When  I  came,  I  found  the  Grecian  bishop  with 
him,  who  ordained  me  and  three  more.  But  finding  it  would 
offend  my  brethren,  I  have  never  availed  myself  of  it  to  this 
hour." 

On  the  whole,  the  Greek  ordinations  were  an  ill-advised 
attempt  to  meet  a  difficulty  which  was  to  find  a  later, 
happier,  and  more  enduring  solution. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    DEVELOPING   CHURCH 

IT  is  very  striking,  meanwhile,  to  notice  the  clear  purpose 
with  which,  during  all  this  troubled  period,  Wesley  kept 
loyal  to  his  own  ideals,  and  the  insight  and  vigilance  with 
which  he  continued  to  shape  the  movement  under  his 
care,  making  its  discipline  perfect  and  its  machinery  com- 
plete. He  saw,  for  example,  with  a  flash  of  statesmanlike 
insight,  the  need  of  giving  to  his  work  coherence  and 
unity.  The  societies  had  burst  into  the  blossom  of  the 
class-meeting,  with  infinite  advantage  in  the  way  of 
stimulus  and  oversight.  But  the  societies  as  a  whole 
were  unrelated  fragments.  Each  class-meeting  resembled 
a  tiny  living  cell ;  a  society  was  a  congeries  of  such  cells. 
The  problem  was  to  knit  these  scattered  cells,  or  congeries 
of  cells,  into  one  vital  organism. 

In  the  Conference  of  1 763  the  question  was  asked : 
"  Can  there  be  any  such  thing  as  a  general  union  of  each 
society  throughout  England  ? "  A  somewhat  crude  sug- 
gestion was  offered  in  reply :  "  May  not  all  the  societies 
in  England  be  considered  as  one  body,  united  by  one 
Spirit?  May  not  that  in  London,  the  mother  church, 
consult  for  the  good  of  all  the  societies  ?  May  not  the 
stewards  of  that  society  answer  letters  from  all  parts,  and 
give  advice,  at  least  in  temporals  ? " l 

But  this  was  obviously  no  solution  to  the  problem. 
How  could  the  state  of  all  the  societies  be  known  to  the 
stewards  of  the  London  societies  ?  Even  if  this  spacious 
knowledge  were  attained,  and  if  the  stewards  were  clothed 
with  some  power  of  advice,  or  of  government,  this 
would  not  knit  the  societies  into  a  single  organism.  It 
would  only  create  a  little  spiritual  oligarchy,  which 
might  well  become  a  despotism.  Wesley  had  hardly  yet 

a  Myles,  p.  90. 

366 


THE   DEVELOPING   CHURCH  367 

realised  that  in  his  new  order  of  itinerating  "  helpers  "  he 
was  creating  a  force  hitherto  unknown  in  ecclesiastical 
history,  a  corporate  pastorate ;  a  pastorate  which  belonged 
to  the  whole  Church,  and  not  to  individual  charges  in  it. 
When  the  pastorate  became  hi  this  way  a  unit,  the 
churches  under  the  care  of  such  a  pastorate  must  be  a 
unit  too.  And  this  corporate  pastorate  was  to  find  in 
the  annual  Conference  exactly  such  an  instrument  for  the 
government  of  the  Church  as  a  whole  as  was  needed. 
But  Wesley,  we  repeat,  as  yet  hardly  realised  the  range 
and  power  of  the  very  machinery  he  had  created. 

All  through  these  troubled  years  the  characteristic  in- 
stitutions of  Methodism  were  swiftly  taking  shape.  The 
training  of  the  helpers  grows  in  method  and  thoroughness. 
The  famous  "rules  of  a  helper" — rules  which  still  form 
the  marching  orders  of  every  Methodist  preacher  in  the 
world,  and  are  read  year  by  year  in  every  Methodist 
Synod — belong  to  this  period.  Nothing  can  well  be 
stronger,  finer,  or  loftier  than  the  counsels  —  counsels 
which  have  the  accent  and  the  urgency  of  commands — 
by  which  Wesley  at  this  time  was  moulding  the  habits 
of  his  many  agents,  and  creating  traditions  for  unborn 
generations.  Whoever  reads  these  admonitions  finds 
himself  in  contact  with  a  very  remarkable  body  of  litera- 
ture. In  form  they  are  severely  condensed,  yet  absolutely 
clear  English,  English  that  Swift  or  Cobbett  might  have 
envied,  but  could  not  have  surpassed.  And  the  moral 
quality  of  these  admonitions  is  even  more  remarkable 
than  their  literary  energy.  The  swift,  terse,  abrupt  sen- 
tences have  the  rush  and  impact  of  bullets;  they  are 
charged  with  a  spiritual  intensity  which  has  the  clearness 
of  flame  without  its  heat.  Wesley's  counsels  and  rebukes 
are  as  swift  and  urgent  as  messages  from  the  unseen. 
Here  are  examples : — 

"  Sleep  not  more  than  you  need  ;  talk  not  more  than  you  need. 
And  never  be  idle,  nor  triflingly  employed.  But  if  you  can  do 
but  one — either  follow  your  studies,  or  instruct  the  ignorant — let 
your  studies  alone ;  I  would _throw  by  all  the  libraries  in  the  world 
rather  than  be  guilty  of  the  perdition  of  one  soul."  l 

1  Myles,  p.  115. 


368  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

Then  follows  a  series  of  almost  fierce  self-questionings : — 

"Why  are  we  not  more  knowing?  A.  Because  we  are  idle. 
We  forget  the  very  first  rule,  '  Be  diligent.  Never  be  unemployed 
a  moment.  Never  be  triflingly  employed.'  .  .  . 

"  Which  of  you  spends  as  many  hours  a  day  in  God's  work  as 
you  did  formerly  in  man's  work  1  We  talk,  talk — or  read  history, 
or  what  comes  next  to  hand.  We  must,  absolutely  must,  cure  this 
evil,  or  give  up  the  whole  work. 

"  But  how  ?  i .  Read  the  most  useful  books,  and  that  regularly 
and  constantly.  Steadily  spend  all  the  morning  in  this  employ, 
or  at  least  five  hours  in  twenty-four. 

"  '  But  I  read  only  the  Bible.'  Then  you  ought  to  teach  others 
to  read  only  the  Bible ;  and,  by  parity  of  reason,  to  hear  only  the 
Bible.  But  if  so,  you  need  preach  no  more.  Just  so  said  George 
Bell.  And  what  is  the  fruit  1  Why,  now  he  neither  reads  the 
Bible  nor  anything  else.  If  you  need  no  book  but  the  Bible,  you 
are  got  above  St.  Paul.  He  wanted  others,  too.  Bring  the  books, 
says  he,  but  especially  the  parchments ;  those  written  on  parch- 
ment. 

"  '  But  I  have  no  taste  for  reading.'  Contract  a  taste  for  it  by 
use,  or  return  to  your  trade. 

"  '  But  different  men  have  different  tastes.'  Therefore  some  may 
read  less  than  others ;  but  none  should  read  less  than  this. 

"  The  sum  is,  Go  into  every  house  in  course,  and  teach  every 
one  therein,  young  and  old,  if  they  belong  to  us,  to  be  Christians, 
inwardly  and  outwardly.  Make  every  particular  plain  to  their 
understanding.  Fix  it  in  their  memory.  Write  it  on  their  heart. 
In  order  to  this,  there  must  be  line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept. 
I  remember  to  have  heard  my  father  asking  my  mother,  '  How 
could  you  have  the  patience  to  tell  that  blockhead  the  same  thing 
twenty  times  over  1 '  She  answered,  '  Why,  if  I  had  told  him  but 
nineteen  times,  I  should  have  lost  all  my  labour.'  What  patience, 
indeed,  what  love,  what  knowledge  is  requisite  for  this  ! 

"Over  and  above  :  wherever  there  are  ten  children  in  a  society, 
spend  at  least  an  hour  with  them  twice  a  week.  And  do  this, 
not  in  a  dull,  dry,  formal  manner,  but  in  earnest,  with  your 
might. 

" '  But  I  have  no  gift  for  this.'  Gift  or  no  gift,  you  are  to  do  it 
else  you  are  not  called  to  be  a  Methodist  preacher.  Do  it  as  you 
can,  till  you  can  do  it  as  you  would."  l 

Wesley's  standard  for  his  helpers  in  every  realm  was 
of  an  heroic  pitch.  He  required  them  to  work  with  the 

1  Myles,  p.  115. 


THE   DEVELOPING   CHURCH  369 

utmost  energy  of  which  they  were  capable;  but  they 
must  be  students  as  well  as  workers  !  No  man  ever  hated 
ignorance,  and  the  fanaticism  bred  of  ignorance,  more 
than  he.  Here  are  examples  of  the  admonitions  with 
which  he  strove  to  enforce  on  his  busy  helpers  the  habits 
and  temper  of  students : — 

"  What  general  method  of  employing  our  time  would  you  advise 
us  to?  A.  i.  As  often  as  possible  to  rise  at  four.  2.  From 
four  to  five  in  the  morning,  and  from  five  to  six  in  the  evening  to 
meditate,  pray,  and  read,  partly  the  Scriptures,  with  the  Notes  on 
the  New  Testament,  partly  KempisJ  and  the  Instructions  for 
Children,  and  partly  the  closely  practical  parts  of  the  Christian 
Library.  3.  From  six  in  the  morning  till  twelve  (allowing  an 
hour  for  breakfast),  to  read  in  order,  with  much  prayer,  Bishop 
Pearson  on  the  Creed,  Mr.  Boehm's  and  Nelson's  sermons,  the 
remaining  parts  of  the  Christian  Library,  our  other  tracts  and 
poems,  '  Paradise  Lost,'  and  Professor  Frank's  works. 

"  How  may  we  be  more  useful  in  conversation  ?  A.  i .  Fix  the 
end  of  each  conversation  before  you  begin.  2.  Watch  and  pray 
during  the  time.  3.  Spend  two  or  three  minutes  every  hour  in 
earnest  prayer.  4.  Rarely  spend  above  an  hour  at  a  time  in  con- 
versing with  any  one." l 

Amongst  the  quaint  but  intensely  practical  counsels  he 
gives  are  some  as  to  the  art  of  escaping  popularity  : — 

"How  shall  we  avoid  popularity?  We  mean  such  esteem  and 
love  from  the  people  as  is  not  for  the  glory  of  God.  i .  Earnestly 
pray  for  a  piercing  sense  of  the  danger  and  the  sinfulness  of  it. 
2.  Take  care  how  you  ingratiate  yourself  with  any  people  by 
slackness  of  discipline.  3.  Or  by  any  method  which  another 
preacher  cannot  follow.  4.  Warn  the  people  among  whom  you 
are  most  of  esteeming  or  loving  you  too  much.  5.  Converse 
sparingly  with  those  who  are  particularly  fond  of  you."  2 

Times  and  men  are  strangely  changed  since  those 
words  were  written.  What  preacher  to-aay  has  to  study 
anxiously  "  how  to  avoid  popularity,"  or  finds  any  neces- 
sity for  warning  the  people  amongst  whom  he  labours 
against  "  esteeming  him  or  loving  him  too  much  " ! 

Wesley  had  quite  a  modern  conception  of  the  possibili- 
ties of  the  press  as  a  teaching  instrument,  and  as  early  as 

1  Myles,  p.  97.  3  Ibid.,  p.  98. 

2  A 


370  WESLEY   AND   HIS    CENTURY 

1747  he  had  organised  a  tract  society.  Two  years  later  he 
began  to  compile  the  "  Christian  Library,"  a  series  of  fifty 
volumes.  A  Methodist  might  be  poor,  but  Wesley  was 
determined  he  should  not  be  illiterate.  Later  he  taught 
his  helpers  that  to  put  a  good  book  into  a  home  was  to 
plant  in  it  a  permanent  civilising  force ;  and  so  they  must 
sell  books  as  diligently  as  they  preached  sermons.  He 
says :  "  Let  each  of  you  do  like  William  Pennington : 
carry  books  with  you  through  every  round.  Exert  your- 
selves in  this.  Be  not  ashamed.  Be  not  weary.  Leave 
no  stone  unturned."  To  one  of  his  preachers  he  writes : 
"It  is  of  unspeakable  use  to  spread  our  practical  tracts 
in  every  society.  Billy  Pennington,  in  one  year,  sold 
more  of  these  in  Cornwall  than  had  been  sold  for  seven 
years  before.  So  may  you,  if  you  take  the  same  method. 
Carry  one  sort  of  books  with  you  the  first  time  you  go  the 
round ;  another  sort  the  second  time ;  and  so  on.  Preach 
on  the  subject  at  each  place;  and,  after  preaching,  en- 
courage the  congregation  to  buy  and  read  the  tract." 

Finance  has  always,  and  necessarily,  filled  a  great  space 
in  Methodist  affairs,  and  the  frugality  and  business  sense 
which  mark  Wesley's  financial  methods  are  very  striking. 
At  first  Wesley's  helpers  were  like  the  Seventy  whom 
Christ  sent  out  as  the  earliest  preachers  of  Christianity. 
They  took  neither  purse  nor  scrip  with  them.  Their 

Eockets  were  almost   as  empty   as   those   of  mendicant 
•iars,  though  their  heads  were  better  furnished,  and  their 
hearts   carried   a  more   radiant  sunshine.     But    in  due 
course  salaries  had  to  be  paid  to  the  men  and  a  provision 
made  for  their  wives. 

The  salaries,  looked  at  with  modern  eyes,  were,  as  we 
have  already  shown,  of  an  almost  incredibly  microscopic 
scale.  What  an  heroic  and  long  since  extinct  order  of 
preachers'  wives,  too,  must  that  first  generation  of 
Methodist  preachers  have  discovered,  since  they  could 
live  and  clothe  themselves  decently,  and  contrive  to  be 
cheerful,  on  an  allowance  of  four  shillings  a  week,  with  an 
addition  of  twenty  shillings  per  quarter  for  each  child ! 
Wesley  made  a  provision  for  his  worn-out  preachers,  but 
it  was  in  principle  only  a  form  of  self-help.  A  regulation 
passed  in  1763  required  each  preacher,  out  of  his  scanty 
salary,  to  contribute  ten  shillings  yearly.  This  sum  was 


THE   DEVELOPING    CHURCH  371 

lodged  in  the  hands  of  three  stewards,  and  formed  a  fund 
out  of  which  allowances  were  paid  for  old  or  sickly 
preachers,  or  for  their  widows.  The  fund  was  painfully 
modest  in  scale,  but  it  was  the  germ  out  of  which  have 
grown  the  great  pension  funds  of  modern  Methodism. 

Wesley,  it  may  be  added,  had  a  wholesome  horror  of 
debt ;  a  hate  of  it  which  perhaps  had  its  root  in  memories 
of  his  debt-contracting  and  debt-oppressed  father.  And 
he  tried,  but  alas !  with  only  imperfect  success,  to  plant 
his  own  conscience  on  this  subject  amongst  his  societies. 
In  1756,  when  the  work  had  been  in  progress  for  sixteen 
years,  the  debts  of  the  Connexion,  mainly  on  chapels, 
amounted  to  ^4000.  In  1771  they  were  not  quite  £7000, 
an  average  debt  of  less  than  .£100  upon  each  chapel. 
These  figures  seem  trivial  when  compared  with  the 
huge  financial  burdens  of  modern  Methodism.  On  the 
Methodist  churches  of  a  single  colony,  with  a  population 
of  a  little  over  1,000,000,  there  is,  to-day,  carried  with 
smiling  courage,  nearly  forty  times  the  amount  of  the 
debt  on  all  the  Methodist  churches  in  Great  Britain  a 
little  over  a  century  ago !  Wesley's  Church  has,  some- 
how, acquired  a  temper  of  financial  courage  which  would 
have  left  Wesley  himself,  and  the  early  Methodist  Con- 
ferences, almost  paralysed  with  mingled  amazement  and 
alarm ! 

In  1767  Wesley  started  a  fund  for  the  extinction  of  the 
debts  on  his  chapels.  He  proposed  to  raise  ^"12,600  in  two 
years,  by  subscriptions  ranging  from  55.  to  two  guineas. 
Such  a  scheme  seems  strangely  modest  when  it  is  re- 
membered that  in  1900  the  Wesleyan  Churches  of  Great 
Britain  raised  ;£  1,000,000  in  a  single  effort,  while  the 
Methodist  Churches  in  the  United  States  in  a  similar  way 
raised  nearly  ,£4,000,000.  But  the  scheme  of  1767  only 
partially  succeeded.  Two  years  afterwards  £5000  still 
remained  unpaid  ;  yet  Wesley's  appeals  to  his  people  were 
pathetic,  eloquent,  and  urgent  in  what  ought  to  have  been 
a  resistless  degree.  "  I  think,"  he  wrote  to  one  trusted 
adherent  after  another,  "  I  think  you  love  me,  and  the  cause 
wherein  I  am  engaged.  You  wisn  to  ease  me  of  any  burden 
you  can.  You  sincerely  desire  the  salvation  of  souls  and 
the  prosperity  of  the  work  of  God.  Will  you  not  then 
exert  yourself  on  such  an  occasion  as  this  ? " 


372  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

When  in  1769  a  second  effort  was  made  Wesley 
wrote : — 

"  Are  the  Methodists  able  to  clear  this  in  one  year  ?  Yes,  as 
able  as  they  are  to  clear  ^50.  But  are  they  willing  ?  That  I 
cannot  tell.  I  am  sure  a  few  of  them  are,  even  of  those  who  have 
a  large  measure  of  worldly  goods ;  yea,  and  those  who  are  lately 
increased  in  substance,  who  have  twice,  perhaps  ten  or  twenty 
times,  as  much  as  when  they  saw  me  first.  Are  you  one  of 
them  ?  Whether  you  are  or  not,  whether  your  substance  is  less 
or  more,  are  you  willing  to  give  what  assistance  you  can  ?  to  do 
what  you  can  without  hurting  your  family  1  '  But  if  I  do  so,  I 
cannot  lay  out  so  much,  in  such  and  such  things,  as  I  intended.' 
That  is  true ;  but  will  this  hurt  you  ?  What,  if  instead  of  en- 
larging, you  should,  for  the  present,  contract  your  expenses  ?  spend 
less,  that  you  may  be  able  to  give  more.  Would  there  be  any 
harm  in  this  ? " l 

That  letter  is  only  a  sample  of  similar  communications 
addressed  to  other  members  of  his  societies.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  imagine  a  more  moving  appeal,  and  it  was 
weighted  by  the  whole  force  of  Wesley's  life  and  example. 
And  yet  the  church  debts  of  that  period  survived  even 
such  an  appeal  from  such  a  man. 

If  any  one  wishes  to  realise  the  enormous  growth  of  the 
Methodist  Church  in  wealth,  the  new  habits  of  generosity 
which  have  been  created,  and  the  degree  in  which  the 
Christian  conscience  has  grown  instructed  as  to  the  use 
of  money,  let  him  imagine  what  sort  of  response  such  an 
appeal,  from  such  lips,  would  evoke  to-day. 

Nothing  is  more  striking  in  all  Wesley's  instructions 
and  appeals  to  his  converts  than  the  masterful  note 
which  runs  through  them.  The  accent  of  authority  is 
always  clear  and  high,  and  it  is  one  more  illustration 
of  the  fact  that  Methodism  was  in  no  sense,  and  at  no 
stage  of  its  history,  a  democracy.  The  crowd  did  not 
evolve  Wesley  and  confer  power  upon  him.  He  was  never 
a  demagogue,  ruling  the  multitude  by  flattering  it.  From 
the  very  first,  by  the  compulsion  of  events,  and  perhaps 
by  natural  temper  and  genius,  Wesley  was  an  autocrat. 
There  were,  of  course,  mixed  elements  in  his  character. 
He  could  be  as  docile  as  a  child  to  any  authority  which 

1  Tyerman,  p.  613. 


THE   DEVELOPING   CHURCH  373 

had  moral  force  behind  it.  But  command  was  natural  and 
easy  for  him.  He  was  by  necessity — and  necessity  in  such 
a  realm  is  only  another  word  for  divine  purpose — the  per- 
sonal centre  of  the  whole  movement.  And  authority  was 
for  him  inevitable. 

Southey,  who  profoundly  misreads  Wesley's  character 
says  that  "  the  love  of  power  was  the  ruling  passion  in  his 
mind."  Against  Southey,  however,  may  be  set  the  judg- 
ment of  a  much  keener  mind  than  his,  that  of  Miss  Wedg- 
wood. She  expends  pages  to  show  that  "  supreme  position 
was  never  an  object  of  ambition  to  Wesley."  Wesley  him- 
self affirms  this  again  and  again,  with  a  transparent 
sincerity  which  is  irresistible : — 

"'The  power  I  have,'  he  says,  'I  never  sought;  it  was  the 
undesired,  unexpected  result  of  the  work  God  was  pleased  to  work 
by  me.  I  have  a  thousand  times  sought  to  devolve  it  on  others ; 
but  as  yet  I  cannot ;  I  therefore  suffer  it  till  I  can  find  any  to  ease 
me  of  my  burden. ' " 1 

Facts  amply  justify  that  bit  of  self-description.  It  needs 
only  a  glance,  indeed,  at  Wesley's  career  to  see  that,  so  far 
from  thrusting  himself  into  the  foremost  place  on  every 
occasion,  and  assuming  the  accents  of  a  leader,  he  may 
often  be  accused,  with  reason,  of  hanging  back  too  long, 
and  of  failing  in  initiative.  Charles  Wesley,  and  not  his 
older  and  more  masterful  brother,  formed  the  Holy  Club 
at  Oxford,  and  first  won  the  sneering  title  of  "  Methodist." 
Morgan,  in  that  society,  and  not  Wesley,  began  philan- 
thropic work.  Whitefield,  and  not  Wesley,  was  the  first 
field-preacher.  Wesley  went  to  America  because  Ogle- 
thorpe  persuaded  him.  He  left  America  because  his  flock 
had  revolted  from  him.  He  started  the  society  at  James 
Hutton's  house  under  Bohler's  advice.  He  always,  in  a 
word,  needed  some  external  impulse  before  he  moved. 

That  he  had  no  ambition  to  be  the  founder  of  a  new 
Church  is  proved  by  the  whole  story  of  his  work.  He 
strained  the  loyalty  of  his  people  to  breaking  point  in  the 
effort  to  keep  Methodism,  as  an  organisation  and  a  leaven, 
within  the  Anglican  Church.  But  power  was  thrust  upon 
him  by  the  mere  course  of  events ;  and  he  had  enough  of 

1  Sonthey,  vol.  ii.  p.  70. 


374  WESLEY   AtfD  HIS  CENTURY 

the  temper  of  a  born  leader  of  men  not  to  fling  off  the 
burden  of  inevitable  authority,  when  it  was  necessary  to  the 
effectiveness  of  his  work,  and  to  the  security  of  its  results. 
He  describes,  with  a  frankness  so  courageous  that  it  is 
nothing  less  than  amusing,  the  origin  of  his  own  authority. 
The  people,  he  declares,  sought  him  out,  not  he  them.  And 
Wesley  proceeds  to  trace  this  relation  of  dependence 
on  their  side,  and  of  authority  on  his,  right  through  the 
whole  gamut  of  his  workers. 

This  was  the  case  with  his  societies : — 

"The  desire  was  on  their  part,  not  on  mine;  my  desire  was  to 
live  and  die  in  retirement ;  but  I  did  not  see  that  I  could  refuse 
them  my  help  and  be  guiltless  before  God.  Here  commenced  my 
power ;  namely,  a  power  to  appoint,  when,  where,  and  how  they 
should  meet;  and  to  remove  those  whose  life  showed  that  they 
had  no  desire  to  flee  from  the  wrath  to  come.  And  this  power 
remained  the  same,  whether  people  meeting  together  number 
twelve,  twelve  hundred,  or  twelve  thousand." 

This  was  repeated  in  the  case  of  the  stewards :  "  Let 
it  be  remarked,  it  was  I  myself,  not  the  people,  who  chose 
the  stewards,  and  appointed  to  each  the  distinct  work 
wherein  he  was  to  help  me  as  long  as  I  chose."  The 
preachers,  again,  with  their  range  of  work  and  of  gifts, 
stood  in  the  same  relation  of  dependence  on  Wesley : — 

"  Observe  these  likewise  desired  me,  not  I  them.  And  here 
commenced  my  power  to  appoint  each  of  these,  when,  where,  and 
how  to  labour ;  that  is,  while  he  chose  to  continue  with  me ;  for 
each  had  a  power  to  go  away  when  he  pleased,  as  I  had  also  to  go 
away  from  them,  or  any  of  them,  if  I  saw  sufficient  cause.  The 
case  continued  the  same  when  the  number  of  preachers  increased. 
I  had  just  the  same  power  still  to  appoint  when,  where,  and  how 
each  should  help  me ;  and  to  tell  any,  if  I  saw  cause,  '  I  do  not 
desire  your  help  any  longer.'  On  these  terms,  and  no  other,  we 
joined  at  first ;  on  these  we  continue  joined." l 

The  Conference  became  in  due  course  the  centre  of 
authority  for  Methodism.  But  Wesley  proceeds  to  show 
with  the  utmost  plainness  that  he  was  absolute  in  the 

1  Southey,  vol.  ii.  p.  71. 


THE    DEVELOPING   CHURCH  375 

Conference  ;  it  was  his  creation,  the  reflex  of  his  will,  the 
servant  of  his  plans : — 

"Observe;  I  myself  sent  for  these,  of  my  own  free  choice  ;  and 
I  sent  for  them  to  advise,  not  to  govern  me.  Neither  did  I,  at  any 
of  those  times,  divest  myself  of  any  part  of  that  power  which  the 
providence  of  God  had  cast  upon  me,  without  any  design  or  choice 
of  mine.  What  is  that  power  ]  It  is  a  power  of  admitting  into, 
and  excluding  from,  the  societies  under  my  care ;  of  choosing  and 
removing  stewards  ;  of  receiving  or  not  receiving  helpers ;  of  ap- 
pointing them  when,  where,  and  how  to  help  me ;  and  of  desiring 
them  to  meet  me  when  I  see  good.  And  as  it  was  merely  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  providence  of  God,  and  for  the  good  of  the  people,  that 
I  at  first  accepted  this  power,  which  I  never  sought — nay,  a  hun- 
dred times  laboured  to  throw  off — so  it  is  on  the  same  considera- 
tions, not  for  profit,  honour,  or  pleasure,  that  I  use  it  at  this  day." 

Wesley  recites  all  this  not  in  the  least  with  the  accents 
of  an  autocrat,  jealous  of  his  right  to  rule,  but  of  a  witness 
explaining  facts. 

His  power,  of  course,  was  not  like  that  of  Ignatius 
Loyola,  the  authority  of  a  despot  over  a  celibate  Order,  an 
Order  composed  of  men  taught  to  think  freedom  a  sin, 
and  bondage  a  piety.  Wesley's  assistants  and  helpers 
came  of  the  sturdy  British  stock.  They  were  men  nursed 
in  freedom,  with  all  natural  ties  about  them.  And  Wes- 
ley's power  was  not  that  of  a  lord  over  serfs,  but  of  a 
father  among  his  children.  They  were  his  spiritual  off- 
spring. His  training  and  intellect,  his  natural  gifts  and 
range  of  knowledge,  strengthened  all  his  spiritual  claims  to 
authority.  And  it  may  be  added  that  the  course  of  history 
steadily  and  curiously  multiplied  his  power. 

For  thirty  years  before  his  death  Wesley  stood  as  lonely 
as  an  Alpine  peak.  He  was  not  merely  without  rivals,  but 
almost  without  comrades ;  and  he  had  no  visible  successor. 
Everything  centred  in  him  and  depended  on  him.  His 
assistants  were  but  his  spiritual  children.  It  is  difficult 
to  find  in  history  a  parallel  to  the  exact  type  of  authority 
which,  during  the  later  years  of  his  career  at  least,  hung  on 
Wesley's  lips  and  was  carried  on  the  tip  of  his  pen.  And 
the  stamp  of  that  masterful  will  is  on  his  church  at  a 
hundred  points  to-day. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A   THREATENED   SCHISM 

WHITEFIELD  died  at  Newbury  Port,  in  the  United  States, 
on  September  30, 1770,  and  his  death  had  some  dramatic 
features  which  made  it  a  fitting  close  to  a  great  career. 
He  had  just  finished  a  week  of  open-air  services,  marked 
by  extraordinary  power,  at  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire. 
On  his  way  home  he  addressed  a  vast  assembly  in  the 
fields  near  Exeter.  It  was,  though  he  knew  it  not,  his  last 
service,  to  use  his  own  grandiose  words,  with  "  the  sky 
for  sounding-board";  and  he  was  so  carried  away  by 
a  passion  of  emotion  that  he  preached  with  unexhausted 
energy  for  two  hours !  Thirty-two  years  before,  at  Kings- 
wood,  he  had  first  broken  through  all  ecclesiastical  con- 
ventions and  preached  in  the  open-air  to  the  miners 
there,  and  his  last  open-air  sermon  was  as  mighty  as 
his  first. 

On  the  evening  of  the  same  day,  as  the  darkness  fell, 
the  crowd  gathered  round  the  house  where  Whitefield 
was  staying.  They  pressed  their  way  in  and  thronged 
the  hall,  eager  to  catch  some  more  words  from  lips  so 
eloquent.  Whitefield  was  at  supper;  he  was  exhausted 
with  fatigue,  and  broken  with  wnat,  though  he  knew  it 
not,  was  a  mortal  sickness,  and  he  told  a  clergyman  who 
was  with  him  to  address  the  people.  "  I  cannot  say  a 
word,"  he  explained,  and  taking  a  candle  he  hastened  to 
his  room. 

At  the  head  of  the  stairs  he  stopped,  and  looked  down 
on  the  faces  upturned  to  him  in  the  hall  beneath.  The 
appeal  of  those  silent,  eager  countenances  was  irresistible, 
and  with  the  lifted  candle  in  his  right  hand  Whitefield 
began  to  speak.  The  trembling,  musical  voice  flowed  on ; 
the  rush  of  words  and  thoughts  never  ceased  till  the 
candle  held  in  the  preacher's  hand  burned  away  and, 
with  a  flash,  expired.  Whitefield,  though  nobody  sus- 

376 


A   THREATENED    SCHISM  377 

pected  it,  was  a  dying  man ;  the  quenched  flame  of  the 
candle  was  a  parable. 

Years  before,  looking  forward  with  a  gleam  of  prophet- 
like  vision  to  his  own  dying  hour,  Whitetield  had  said,  "  I 
shall  die  silent.  It  has  pleased  God  to  enable  me  to  bear 
so  many  testimonies  for  Him  during  my  life  that  He  will 
require  none  from  me  when  I  die."  And  this  was  literally 
true.  He  slept  that  night  till  two  o'clock,  then  awoke ; 
an  attack  of  asthma  had  seized  him.  He  knew  his  end 
was  come.  Breath  failed  him.  He  fell  on  his  knees,  with 
choking  respiration  tried  to  pray,  and  died  in  the  effort. 
His  head  was  bowed,  his  hands  stretched  out  in  supplica- 
tion, when  the  last  breath  fluttered  over  his  lips. 

The  sober,  practical  British  mind  is  apt  to  disparage 
mere  gifts  of  speech,  and  to  deny  the  title  of  greatness 
to  any  one  who  is  nothing  more  than  an  orator.  White- 
field,  it  is  true,  built  no  Church,  and,  in  a  sense,  left  no 
followers.  He  certainly  added  no  new  province  to  the 
realm  of  human  knowledge,  and  he  shaped  no  new  channel 
in  which  the  great  forces  of  religion  might  permanently 
flow.  But  his  greatness  cannot  be  denied.  For  over 
thirty  years  he  swayed  vaster  crowds  by  his  preaching 
than  any  other  orator  known  to  the  history  of  religion; 
and  the  mere  estimate  that  he  preached  18,000  sermons 
—an  average,  say,  of  more  than  ten  a  week — for  the  whole 
of  his  public  ministry,  gives  a  quite  inadequate  measure 
of  his  work.  The  scale  of  his  audiences,  the  passion 
and  length  of  his  sermons — to  say  nothing  of  the  crowded 
tasks  which  filled  up  the  brief  intervals  betwixt  his 
discourses — all  have  to  be  considered. 

And  Whitefield's  natural  gifts  —  the  deep,  melodious 
voice,  the  rush  of  moving  words,  the  dramatic  gestures 
which  great  actors  envied,  the  power,  which  is  the  supreme 
gift  of  oratory,  of  making  vast  audiences  thrill  with  the 
exact  emotions  of  the  speaker's  own  soul — all  these  in 
him  were  but  the  servants  and  instruments  of  still 
mightier  forces,  forces  which  stream  out  of  the  spiritual 
realm  and  shape  the  human  soul  itself  to  a  new  pattern. 

It  is  sometimes  forgotten  that  Whitefield  did  in  Ame- 
rica an  almost  greater  work  than  that  he  accomplished 
in  England.  On  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  he  was, 
hi  a  sense,  the  spiritual  heir  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  What 


378  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

is  known  in  the  religious  history  of  the  United  States  as 
"the  Great  Awakening"  had  almost  passed  away  when 
Whitefield  stepped  upon  American  soil ;  but  his  preaching 
renewed  on  a  new  scale  that  memorable  work.  He  gave  it 
a  wider  range  and  a  nobler  character  than  it  had  reached 
under  Jonathan  Edwards.  Whitefield,  in  America  no 
more  than  in  England,  built  a  Church  which  bears  his 
name;  but  the  religious  life  of  neither  England  nor 
America  would  be  quite  the  same  to-day  if  George 
Whitefield,  the  servitor  of  the  inn  at  Gloucester,  the  "  poor 
scholar"  of  Pembroke  College,  the  open-air  preacher  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  had  never  lived. 

Over  Whitefield's  ashes  the  fire  of  the  great  Calvinistic 
controversy  was  re-kindled,  and  burned  more  fiercely  than 
even  at  first ;  perhaps  for  the  reason  that  this  time  there 
was  a  woman  in  it !  A  woman,  when  she  becomes  a 
theologian,  takes  her  theology,  if  not  more  earnestly,  yet 
more  vehemently,  not  to  say  shrewishly,  than  does  a 
theologian  of  the  opposite  sex.  She  follows  her  logic 
more  relentlessly  to  its  uttermost  conclusion ;  she  is 
more  fiercely  jealous  for  the  honour  and  the  influence  of 
her  creed.  And  at  this  stage  a  woman  was  doing,  in 
the  Calvinistic  branch  of  the  Methodist  revival,  what 
Whitefield  had  refused  to  do,  and  knew,  indeed,  he  could 
not  do.  "  I  should  weave  a  Penelope's  web,"  he  said,  "  if 
I  formed  societies."  He  had  no  organising  gift;  and 
without  organisation  there  is  no  permanent  work.  But 
Lady  Huntingdon  was  doing  that  very  work,  and  doing 
it  with  signal  energy  and  success. 

She  was  a  remarkable  woman;  had  she  belonged  to 
the  Church  of  Rome,  as  Macaulay  says,  she  would  have 
been  adorned  with  the  nimbus  of  a  saint.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  Earl  Ferrers,  the  widow  of  the  Earl  of 
Huntingdon,  and  her  rank  and  wealth  enabled  her  to  do 
for  the  Revival  what  no  other  person  could  have  done. 
She  opened  new  worlds  to  it.  She  gave  it  social  prestige. 
She  sheltered  it  from  persecution.  She  invited  White- 
field  to  her  house,  appointed  him  one  of  her  chaplains, 
and  gathered  fashionable  audiences  under  her  own  roof 
to  listen  to  him.  Chesterfi,eld  and  Bolingbroke  came, 
amongst  others,  to  hear  the  famous  preacher.  Chester- 
field listened  with  smiling  courtesy,  as  unmoved  as 


A   THREATENED   SCHISM  379 

though  he  were  listening  to  the  twittering  of  a  bird; 
but  Bolingbroke — the  rake,  the  wit,  the  friend  of  Voltaire, 
the  politician  who  served  all  parties  and  was  loyal  to 
none — was  strangely  moved  by  Whitefield's  preaching. 
He  invited  Whitefield  to  visit  him,  and  sought  religious 
discourse  with  him.  It  may  be  suspected  that  he  was 
simply  in  search  of  the  flavours  of  a  new  excitement. 

Lady  Huntingdon  surrendered  herself  fully  to  the 
ardours  and  ideals  of  the  great  religious  movement  in 
progress.  She  built  chapels  that  bore  her  name  in  various 
parts  of  England,  and  by  appointing  the  preachers  as  her 
chaplains  escaped  the  difficulty  that  so  much  perplexed 
Wesley,  who  would  not  label  himself  and  his  preachers 
"  dissenters,"  and  so  secure  the  shelter  of  the  Toleration 
Act,  and  yet  found  the  doors  of  the  Anglican  churches 
shut  against  both  him  and  them.  Lady  Huntingdon  set 
up  a  great  seminary  for  her  chaplains  at  Trevecca,  in 
Wales.  Benson,  one  of  Wesley's  helpers,  was  classical 
tutor  in  the  college;  the  saintly  Fletcher,  for  a  time 
Wesley's  designated  successor,  was  its  principal. 

Lady  Huntingdon  herself  was  a  Calvinist  of  more 
resolute  type  than  even  Whitefield.  Buckle,  in  his 
"  History  of  Civilisation,"  says  that  Calvinism  is  a  creed 
which  has  a  democratic  stamp,  while  Arminianism  is 
aristocratic  in  its  genius ;  but  that  generalisation  inverts 
the  truth.  Calvinism,  which  creates  a  spiritual  aristocracy 
of  the  elect,  and  limits  God's  mercy  to  them,  easily  com- 
mends itself  to  an  aristocratic  mind  like  that  of  Lady 
Huntingdon.  Southey  is  shrewd  enough  to  see  this. 
"  She  was,"  he  says,  "  predisposed  unconsciously  to  favour 
a  doctrine  which  makes  a  privileged  order  of  souls." 
Wesley  and  Whitefield,  living  under  the  empire  of  great 
motives,  and  dealing  with  great  affairs,  were  reluctant  to 
be  entangled  in  controversy.  In  his  societies  Wesley,  as 
a  settled  policy,  made  no  difference  betwixt  Calvinist  and 
Arminian.  The  two  great  comrades  recorded  in  a  formal 
document  their  resolve,  for  the  sake  of  peace,  "  to  avoid 
preaching  on  Calvinistic  topics  to  the  utmost  extent 
possible."  Charles  Wesley — often  shrewder  than  his 
brother — afterwards  wrote  on  the  document  the  words 
';  vain  agreement " !  Controversy,  betwixt  even  such 
men,  when  parted  at  one  point  by  a  theological  gulf  so 


380  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

profound,  was  inevitable.  Yet  the  controversy  betwixt 
them,  described  in  a  previous  chapter,  had  run  its  course, 
and  practically  died  away  when  an  unhappy  incident 
revived  it. 

Wesley  laboured  perpetually  to  keep  the  theology  of 
the  Revival  in  a  state  of  what  may  be  called  sane  equi- 
poise. It  tended  to  run  to  extremes,  and  it  is  easy  to 
understand  that  tendency.  Theology  was  no  longer  the 
luxury  of  scholars ;  it  was  the  daily  bread  of  the  common 
people.  Or,  to  vary  the  figure,  theology  had  stepped  out 
of  the  drowsy  atmosphere  of  the  Universities  and  of  the 
Churches,  and  was  walking  on  common  earth  amongst  the 
crowds.  That  it  sometimes  lost  its  feet,  or  ran  the  risk  of 
falling  into  the  ditch  on  one  side  or  the  other,  need  excite 
no  wonder.  That  is  the  perpetual  danger  of  a  religious 
movement  which  powerfully  affects  great  multitudes. 

What  may  be  called  the  re-discovered  doctrine  of  entire 
sanctification  or  "  perfection,"  for  example,  lent  itself  easily 
to  exaggeration.  It  not  seldom  came  into  quarrel  with 
rudimentary  morality.  It  lapsed  into  Antinomianism, 
and  there  were  shocking  examples  of  this  peril  amongst 
Wesley's  own  helpers. 

In  the  Conference  of  1771  Wesley  set  himself  to  correct 
this  evil.  He  recited  instances  "  in  which,"  to  use  his 
own  words, "  we  have  leaned  too  much  towards  Calvinism," 
especially  towards  that  aspect  of  Calvinism  which  denies, 
or  seems  to  deny,  to  man  himself  any  part  in  the  business 
of  his  own  salvation.  That  salvation  could  be  by  "  works  " 
had  been  denied  with  an  emphasis  which,  in  some  eager 
ears,  sounded  like  the  assertion — the  welcome  assertion — 
that  salvation  and  works  are  in  eternal  quarrel  with  each 
other!  To  rebuke  this  madness  the  Conference  passed 
certain  resolutions  :— 

"  We  have  received  it  as  a  maxim  that  'a  man  is  to  do  nothing 
in  order  to  justification.'  Nothing  can  be  more  false.  Whoever 
desires  to  find  favour  with  God  should  '  cease  from  evil,  and  learn 
to  do  well.'  Whoever  repents  should  do  '  works  meet  for  repent- 
ance.' And  if  this  is  not  in  order  to  find  favour,  what  does  he  do 
them  for? 

"  Is  not  this  '  salvation  by  works  '  ?  Not  by  the  merit  of  works, 
but  by  works  as  a  condition. 


A   THREATENED   SCHISM  381 

"What  have  we  been  disputing  about  for  these  thirty  years? 
I  am  afraid  about  words. 

"  As  to  merit  itself,  of  which  we  have  been  so  dreadfully  afraid, 
we  are  rewarded  'according  to  our  works,'  yea  'because  of  our 
works.'  How  does  this  differ  from  for  the  sake  of  our  works? 
And  how  differs  this  from  secundum  merita  operum,  as  our  works 
deserve  ?  Can  you  split  this  hair  ?  I  doubt  I  cannot." l 

These  propositions,  looked  at  with  modern  eyes,  are 
offenceless ;  but  to  Lady  Huntingdon  and  the  jealous 
Calvinists  about  her,  they  seemed  hardly  less  than  blas- 
phemous. They  were  the  very  negation  of  the  Gospel! 
Wesley  and  all  associated  with  him  became  vehemently 
suspect.  They  were  betraying  evangelical  doctrine  !  Lady 
Huntingdon  resolved  to  cleanse  Trevecca,  her  training 
college,  from  the  evil  taint.  Everybody  in  the  college 
who  would  not  renounce  the  resolutions  of  the  Conference 
must  be  dismissed.  The  resolutions  were  employed  as  a 
test ;  every  student  and  master  was  required  to  write 
his  verdict  upon  them,  and  to  disavow  them  on  penalty 
of  expulsion.  Benson,  the  classical  master,  was  in  this 
way  compelled  to  resign  his  post. 

Fletcher  was  the  head  of  the  college,  a  man  whose 
saintliness,  wedded  to  great  intellectual  gifts,  moves  even 
Southey  to  almost  rapturous  admiration :  "  A  man  of 
rare  talents,"  he  says,  "  and  rarer  virtue.  No  age  or 
country  has  ever  produced  a  man  of  more  fervent  piety, 
or  more  perfect  charity ;  no  Church  has  ever  pos- 
sessed a  more  apostolic  minister."  But  since  Fletcher 
could  only  hold  his  post  at  Trevecca  at  the  price 
of  disavowing  Wesley,  he  resigned  his  office  there.  "  If 
every  Arminian,"  he  said,  "must  quit  the  college,  I  am 
discharged  for  one,  for  I  cannot  give  up  the  possibility  of 
salvation  of  all,  any  more  than  I  can  give  up  the  truth 
and  love  of  God." 

Wesley  himself  wrote  to  Lady  Huntingdon  disavowing 
the  evil  meaning  which  had  been  read  into  the  resolutions. 
He  concluded  : — 

"  To  be  short.  Such  as  I  am,  I  love  you  well.  You  have  one 
of  the  first  places  in  my  esteem  and  affection,  and  you  once  had 

1  Tyerman,  iii.  p.  73. 


382  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

some  regard  for  me.  But  it  cannot  continue  if  it  depends  upon 
my  seeing  with  your  eyes.  My  dear  friend,  you  seem  not  to  have 
well  learned  yet  the  meaning  of  those  words  which  I  desire  to 
have  continually  written  upon  my  heart,  'Whosoever  doeth  the 
will  of  My  Father  which  is  in  heaven,  the  same  is  My  brother, 
and  sister,  and  mother."  l 

But  when  did  soft  words  soothe  ruffled  theologians  ? 
The  angry  Calvinists  were  not  in  the  least  satisfied ;  and 
not  content  with  purging  their  own  stronghold,  they 
determined  to  carry  the  war  into  the  enemy's  country. 
They  would  attend  the  next  Methodist  Conference  in  a 
body  and  correct  Wesley's  deplorable  theology  in  the 
presence  of  his  own  helpers !  A  circular  letter  was  issued, 
signed  by  Shirley,  one  of  Lady  Huntingdon's  chaplains, 
and  addressed  to  everybody  of  influence  in  connection 
with  the  Kevival  known  to  hold  Calvinistic  views.  The 
Conference  was  to  be  held  at  Bristol,  and  the  circular 
explained  that  "  Lady  Huntingdon  and  many  other  Chris- 
tian friends,  real  Protestants,"  intended  to  hold  a  meeting 
at  Bristol  at  the  same  time : — 

"  It  is  further  proposed  that  they  go  in  a  body  to  the  said  Con- 
ference and  insist  upon  a  formal  recantation  of  the  said  minutes, 
and  in  case  of  a  refusal  that  they  sign  and  publish  their  protest 
against  them.  It  is  submitted  to  you  whether  it  would  not  be 
right,  in  the  opposition  to  be  made  to  such  dreadful  heresy,  to 
recommend  it  to  as  many  of  your  Christian  friends,  as  well  of  the 
Dissenters  as  of  the  Established  Church,  as  you  can  prevail  on  to 
be  there,  the  cause  being  of  so  public  a  nature."  2 

Now,  to  insist  upon  Wesley,  in  the  presence  of  his  own 
Conference,  making  a  formal  recantation  of  truths  which, 
only  a  ye&r  before,  both  he  and  the  Conference  had  so 
solemnly  affirmed,  was  a  very  daring  undertaking.  It 
illustrates,  not  so  much  the  courage  of  Mr.  Shirley  and 
the  whole  corps  of  Lady  Huntingdon's  chaplains,  as  their 
temporary  loss  of  sanity.  Wesley  went  on  his  busy  way 
in  his  usual  cool  fashion,  but  he  issued  a  brief  exposition 
of  the  resolutions  passed  by  the  Conference  of  1770,  and 
wrote  with  his  own  hands,  on  the  copy,  "  If  the  Calvinists 
do  not,  or  will  not,  understand  me,  I  understand  myself 

1  Tyerman,  iii.  p.  93.  a  Ibid.,  p.  94. 


A   THREATENED   SCHISM 

and  I  do  not  contradict  anything  I  have  written  these 
thirty  years." 

The  recantation  began,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  on  Lady 
Huntingdon's  side.  Time  and  reflection  had  cooled  her 
vehemence.  She  wrote  to  Wesley  the  night  before  the 
Conference  assembled,  acknowledging  that  the  circular 
letter  was  too  hastily  drawn  up.  Shirley,  whose  courage, 
too,  had  begun  to  evaporate,  wrote,  apologising  for  the 
offensive  phraseology  to  be  found  in  it.  Not  twenty 
persons  answered  to  the  call  of  the  letter.  The  gentlemen 
who  came  to  correct  his  theology  were  received  by  Wesley 
in  the  Conference  with  exquisite  courtesy  and  good  temper. 
He  hated  controversy,  and  was  willing  to  sacrifice  every- 
thing, except  truth,  to  escape  from  it.  Fifty-three  of  his 
preachers  signed  a  statement  which  Shirley  himself,  at 
Wesley's  half-ironical  request,  prepared : — 

"We  hereby  solemnly  declare,  in  the  sight  of  God,  that  we  have 
no  trust  or  confidence  but  in  the  alone  merits  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  for  justification  or  salvation  either  in  life, 
death,  or  the  day  of  judgment ;  and  though  no  one  is  a  real 
Christian  believer  (and  consequently  cannot  be  saved)  who  doth 
not  good  works,  where  there  is  time  and  opportunity,  yet  our  works 
have  no  part  in  meriting  or  purchasing  our  salvation  from  first  to 
last,  either  in  whole  or  in  part." 

Shirley,  on  his  part,  signed  a  public  acknowledgment 
that  he  had  mistaken  the  meaning  of  the  resolutions. 
But,  unhappily,  the  controversy  was  not  ended.  It  was 
only  transferred  into  the  realm  of  literature.  Fletcher 
had  written  a  vindication  of  the  assailed  minutes,  a  very 
noble  bit  of  writing,  and  including  in  it  a  fine  appeal  for 
brotherly  loyalty  to  each  other  : — 

"  Of  the  two  greatest  and  most  useful  ministers  I  ever  knew 
(he  wrote)  one  is  no  more.  The  other,  after  amazing  labours, 
flies  still,  with  unwearied  diligence,  through  the  three  kingdoms, 
calling  sinners  to  repentance.  Though  oppressed  with  the  weight 
of  nearly  seventy  years,  and  the  cares  of  nearly  thirty  thousand 
souls,  he  shames  still,  by  his  unabated  zeal  and  immense  labours, 
all  the  young  ministers  in  England,  perhaps  in  Christendom.  He 
has  generally  blown  the  Gospel  trumpet,  and  rode  twenty  miles, 
before  most  of  the  professors,  who  despise  his  labours,  have  left 
their  downy  pillows.  As  he  begins  the  day,  the  week,  the  year, 


384  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

so  he  concludes  them,  still  intent  upon  extensive  services  for  the 
glory  of  the  Redeemer  and  the  good  of  souls.  And  shall  we  lightly 
lift  our  pens,  our  tongues,  our  hands  against  him  ?  No ;  let  them 
rather  forget  their  cunning.  If  we  will  quarrel,  can  we  find 
nobody  to  fall  out  with  but  the  minister  upon  whom  God  puts  the 
greatest  honour  ? " 

Shirley  replied  to  Fletcher,  who,  on  his  part,  published 
five  letters  to  Shirley,  the  first  of  his  famous  "  Checks  to 
Antinomianism."  Then  followed  the  most  lively  and  ex- 
asperated tempest  of  theological  controversy  that  ever 
broke  on  English  literature.  The  principal  writers  on  the 
Calvinistic  side  were  Richard  and  Rowland  Hill,  Berridge, 
of  Everton,  and  Toplady,  who  has  been  made  immortal  by 
his  one  matchless  hymn,  "  Rock  of  Ages."  Wesley  took 
little  personal  part  in  the  controversy.  One  brief  and 
deadly  contribution  which  he  made,  it  is  true,  kindled 
much  anger.  Toplady  had  published  a  "Treatise  upon 
Absolute  Predestination."  Wesley  published  a  short 
analysis  of  this  treatise,  with  the  following  summary: — 

"  The  sum  of  all  this  :  One  in  twenty  (suppose)  of  mankind  are 
elected ;  nineteen  in  twenty  are  reprobated.  The  elect  shall  be 
saved,  do  what  they  will ;  the  reprobate  shall  be  damned,  do  what 
they  can.  Reader,  believe  this,  or  be  damned.  Witness  my 
hand.— A.  T." 

To  see  his  theology  condensed  into  a  space  so  narrow, 
and  transformed  into  a  concrete  form  so  dreadful  and 
endorsed  with  his  own  initials,  filled  Toplady  with  an 
anger  almost  too  deep  for  words,  and  that  anger  explains 
the  shrill  tones  in  which  he  scolded  at  large. 

The  fight  was  carried  on  from  the  Arminian  side  not 
only  by  Fletcher  of  Madeley,  but  by  Thomas  Olivers,  one 
of  Wesley's  helpers,  who  had  been  a  cobbler,  and  like 
Toplady  was  a  hymnist.  His  well-known  verses.  "The 
God  of  Abraham  praise,"  strike  a  loftier  and  more  sus- 
tained— if  less  tender — note  than  even  Toplady's  deathless 
hymn.  Fletcher,  alone  amongst  these  angry  divines, 
wrote  with  the  temper  of  a  saint  and  the  manners  of  a 
gentleman ;  while  he  knew  how  to  use  a  keenness  of  logic 
which  recalls  Pascal's  "  Provincial  Letters."  The  other 
controversialists  pursued  each  other  with  injurious  epithets 


A   THREATENED   SCHISM  385 

through  countless  reams  of  literature ;  and  Toplady,  sad 
to  relate,  had  the  most  bitter  tongue  of  all  these  shrewish 
theologians.  "  An  Old  Fox  Tarred  and  Feathered,"  is  the 
title  of  one  of  his  pamphlets  on  Wesley.  Even  for  the 
gentle-spirited  and  saintly  Fletcher  Toplady  employed 
no  other  weapon  than  a  cudgel :  "  In  the  very  few  pages 
of  Fletcher's  letters  which  he  had  perused,"  he  said,  "  the 
serious  passages  were  dulness  double- condensed  and  the 
lighter  passages  impudence  double-distilled  ! " 

The  controversy  is  long  dead ;  but  the  temper  in  which 
it  was  conducted  is  an  enduring  scandal  to  religion. 
What  can  be  more  amazing  than  the  spectacle  of  two 
deeply  religious  men,  one  of  whom  had  written  "  Rock  of 
Ages,"  a  hymn  which  the  Church  of  Christ  will  sing  till 
earthly  hymns  are  no  longer  needed ;  and  the  other  had 
written  one  of  the  greatest  of  sacred  lyrics — "  The  God  of 
Abraham  praise" — abusing  each  other  with  the  temper 
and  language  of  angry  fishwives ! 

But  it  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  this  gust  of  theolo- 
gical passion  quickly  passed  away.  Fletcher,  always  the 
saint  and  the  gentleman,  was  practically  a  dying  man. 
He  was  about  to  leave  England  and  try  the  effect  of 
breathing  once  more  his  native  air  in  Switzerland ;  and 
before  he  left  he  invited  all  the  divines  with  whom  he 
had  been  in  controversy  to  meet  him,  that,  "  all  doctrinal 
differences  apart,  he  might  testify  his  sincere  regret  for 
having  given  them  the  least  displeasure,  and  receive  from 
them  some  condescending  assurance  of  reconciliation  and 
goodwill." 

Nearly  all  the  combatants  in  turn  exhibited,  in  the 
later  stages  of  the  controversy,  a  more  Christian  temper. 
Rowland  Hill  suppressed  one  of  his  bitter  pamphlets,  in 
order,  as  he  said,  "  to  prevent  the  evil  that  might  arise 
from  my  wrong  touches  upon  the  work  of  God."  Berridge 
received  Fletcher  at  his  parsonage,  and  as  he  crossed  his 
threshold  rushed  to  him  with  open  arms  and  tear-wet 
cheeks.  "  How,"  he  cried,  "  could  we  write  so  about  each 
other,  when  we  each  aimed  at  the  same  thing,  the  glory 
of  God  and  the  good  of  souls  ?  "  Toplady,  almost  alone, 
remained  implacable. 

Stevens,  in  his  unwieldy  but  very  able  "  History  of 
Methodism,"  says  that  the  effect  of  this  controversy  was  "  to 

2  B 


386  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

give  a  permanent  character  to  the  theology  of  Methodism ; 
a  resurrection  to  the  faith  which  the  Synod  of  Dort 
had  proscribed ;  greater  prominence  to  the  doctrines  of 
Arminius  and  Grotius  than  all  their  continental  cham- 
pions had  secured  for  them ;  to  spread  evangelical  Armini- 
anism  over  England,  over  all  the  Protestant  portion  of 
the  New  World,  and  more  or  less  around  the  whole 
world;  to  modify  the  theological  tone  of  evangelical 
Christendom,  and  probably  of  all  coming  time." 

This  is  a  wild  over-statement.  The  Calvinistic  dispute 
of  1770  and  the  folio  wing  years  is  but  one  of  the  outer 
and  remote  vibrations  of  the  earlier  controversy  betwixt 
Wesley  and  Whitefield  thirty  years  before.  The  whole 
controversy  was,  no  doubt,  of  importance  as  making 
definite  and  articulate  the  doctrine  of  Methodism  on  one 
particular  and  much-vexed  point.  But  the  earlier  stage 
of  the  controversy  was  the  more  important.  It  was  a 
conflict  betwixt  the  two  great  leaders  of  the  Revival.  The 
controversy  betwixt  them  moved  at  a  high  level,  and 
occurring  at  a  moment  when  the  theology  of  Methodism 
was  yet  in  the  plastic  stage,  it  did,  in  fact,  determine  that 
theology  for  all  time.  The  controversy  of  1770  and  the 
following  years  was  a  battle  betwixt  smaller  men.  Its 
single  permanent  contribution  to  theological  literature 
is  found  in  Fletcher's  famous  "Checks."  And  Fletcher 
not  only  made  the  richest  intellectual  contribution  to 
the  controversy,  he  kindled  in  its  smoke  and  dust  the 
one  clear  flame  of  Christian  spirit  yet  discoverable  in  it. 

It  may  be  added  that,  later,  Lady  Huntingdon  herself 
shared  Wesley's  fate.  Her  societies  were  driven  from  the 
place  in  the  Anglican  Church  in  which  she  had  so  long 
held  them.  The  last  thing  she  contemplated  was  turning 
the  places  of  worship  she  built  into  dissenting  chapels. 
She  appointed  the  preachers  her  personal  chaplains ;  this 
was  supposed  to  be  legally  within  her  right  as  a  peeress 
of  the  realm,  and  the  device  was  understood  to  release 
both  chapels  and  ministers  from  the  Toleration  Act.  But 
in  1779  she  purchased  a  great  building  called  the  Pantheon 
in  the  north  of  London,  and  made  it  the  centre  of  a 
mission.  The  clergyman  within  whose  parish  the  build- 
ing stood  claimed  control  over  it,  and  as  the  result  of  a 
costly  lawsuit  Lad y  Huntingdon's  chaplains  were  pro- 


A    THREATENED   SCHISM  387 

hibited  from  officiating  in  the  new  chapel ;  and  the  de- 
cision was  found  to  apply  to  all  her  chapels.  Lady 
Huntingdon  found  herself  in  cruel  straits.  She  must 
close  her  chapels  or  label  them  dissenting  places  of  wor- 
ship. "  I  am  compelled,"  she  wrote,  "  to  turn  the  finest 
congregation,  not  only  in  England,  but  in  any  part  of  the 
world,  into  a  dissenting  meeting-house  !  I  am  to  be  cast 
out  of  the  Church  now,  only  for  what  I  have  been  doing 
these  forty  years — speaking  and  living  for  Jesus  Christ." 

Her  chaplains  were  shut  up  to  the  same  cruel  choice, 
and,  as  a  result,  the  Calvinistic  branch  shared  the  fate  of 
the  Arminian  division  of  the  Revival.  It  was  driven 
to  undertake  a  separate  existence.  And  so  "  Lady 
Huntingdon's  Connexion"  came  into  existence,  and  still 
survives,  and  the  Anglican  Church  once  more  justified 
its  title  of  "  the  Church  of  missed  opportunities." 

Lady  Huntingdon  had  to  follow  Wesley's  example  at 
another  point.  Her  preachers  could  no  longer  obtain 
ordination  from  the  bishops.  The  sacraments,  as  a 
result,  could  not  be  administered ;  so  her  chaplains  had 
themselves  to  ordain  their  own  successors,  and  ordina- 
tion, to  quote  Lord  Mansfield,  once  more  proved  to  be 
separation. 

Lady  Huntingdon  herself  died  in  1791,  the  same  year 
as  Wesley.  She  was  eighty-four  years  of  age.  Her  sick- 
ness was  of  a  peculiarly  cruel  and  wasting  character,  but 
her  death  was  the  fitting  crown  of  a  saintly  life.  A  blood- 
vessel broke  just  before  she  died,  and,  with  her  lips  still 
wet  with  the  crimson  stain,  she  whispered,  "  I  am  well ! 
All  is  well,  well  for  ever.  I  see  nothing  but  victory. 
The  coming  of  the  Lord  draweth  nigh,  the  coining  of  the 
Lord  draweth  nigh."  Then,  with  the  gesture  of  a  tired 
child,  she  lifted  her  hands  and  said,  "I  long  to  be  at 
home  ;  oh,  I  long  to  be  at  home." 

A  little  before  she  died  she  said — repeating  the  words 
over  and  over  again — "  I  shall  go  to  my  Father  this 
night ; "  and  shortly  after,  "  Can  He  forget  to  be  gracious  ? 
Is  there  any  end  of  His  loving  kindness  ? "  Almost  her 
last  words  were :  "  My  work  is  done ;  I  have  nothing  to  do 
but  to  go  to  my  Father." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    DEED    OF   DECLARATION 

THE  failure  of  the  attempt  in  1 764  to  secure  the  continued 
help  of  at  least  the  evangelical  clergy  in  the  Anglican 
Church  profoundly  affected  the  future  development  of 
Methodism.  Wesley  read  a  paper  to  the  Conference  in 
1769  in  which  he  tells  the  tale  of  his  appeal  to  the  clergy, 
and  of  its  failure.  "  Out  of  fifty  or  sixty,"  he  said,  "  to 
whom  I  wrote,  only  three  vouchsafed  me  an  answer,  so  I 
gave  this  up.  I  can  do  no  more.  They  are  a  rope  of 
sand,  and  such  they  will  continue."  The  only  response 
Wesley  received  at  that  time  was  in  the  shape  of  a  request 
to  put  his  societies  in  each  parish  under  the  control  of  the 
local  clergyman,  and  to  refrain  from  sending  his  helpers  to 
any  place  "  where  there  was  a  godly  minister."  This  was 
a  proposal  to  commit  spiritual  suicide. 

Wesley  just  at  that  moment  was  realising  his  loneliness. 
His  early  comrades  were  no  longer  at  his  side.  Whitefield 
was  simply  a  wandering  evangelist,  absorbed  in  his 
American  work.  He  had  no  ordered  plans  of  his  own, 
and  could  take  no  part  in  the  ordered  plans  of  any  one 
else.  Moreover,  he  was  parted  from  Wesley  by  an  en- 
during and  fatal  divergence  in  doctrine.  Wesley  had  to 
count  him  out  as  a  permanent  force  in  the  Revival. 
Charles  Wesley  had  practically  ceased  to  be  an  itinerant, 
and  the  brothers  were  diverging  ecclesiastically.  For 
Charles  Wesley  the  "  Church "  was  more  and  more  out- 
bulking  the  Revival;  while  John  Wesley,  though  still 
refusing  to  take  a  single  uncompelled  step  towards  separa- 
tion, yet  saw  clearly  that  separation  was  inevitable.  The 
Church  of  England  no  longer  supplied  him  with  helpers, 
and,  it  was  clear,  had  no  friendly  intentions  towards  his 
societies. 

He  was  himself  now  nearly  seventy  years  of  age.  The 
end  of  his  earthly  labours  was  within  measurable  distance. 


THE    DEED   OF    DECLARATION  389 

He  was  not  an  imaginative  man.  He  took  short  views. 
He  saw  clearly  the  things  immediately  round  him,  but 
had  no  vision  for  the  landscape.  But  there  had  come  to 
him  at  last  a  sense  of  the  greatness  and  continuity  of  his 
work.  It  would  outlive  him.  It  had  grown  beyond  his 
dreams,  and  would  still  grow.  And  he  had  somehow  to 
ensure  to  it  order,  discipline,  leadership,  purity  of  doctrine, 
and  continuity  of  method,  after  his  death.  He  must 
crystallise  into  organic  shape  the  tangled  agencies  and 
forces  which  made  up  the  Methodism  of  that  day.  An 
individual  dies,  but  an  institution  wisely  planned  is 
deathless.  It  was  for  Methodism,  at  this  stage,  an  im- 
perative necessity  to  take  some  definite  and  enduring 
legal  form. 

Wesley  turned  for  the  moment  to  his  own  Conference, 
and  to  the  great  order  of  travelling  preachers.  They  were 
men  of  proved  spiritual  gifts,  of  heroic  zeal.  They  were 
faithful  to  the  message  they  carried,  and  loyal  to  Wesley 
himself.  They  were  no  rope  of  sand  !  So  he  tells  them  : 
"  You  are  at  present  one  body.  You  act  in  concert  with 
each  other,  and  by  united  counsels.  And  now  is  the  time 
to  consider  what  can  be  done  in  order  to  continue  this 
union." 

While  Wesley  himself  lived,  he  was  a  sufficient  centre 
of  union.  All  loyalty  centred  in  him.  His  brain  planned, 
his  will  decided,  everything.  His  helpers  were  related  to 
each  other  because  they  were  all  related  to  him.  But  he 
was  not  immortal.  He  must  die  soon,  and  might  die  at 
any  moment.  What  substitute  could  be  found  for  his 
personal  influence  ?  Where  could  a  basis  of  union  be 
discovered  which  did  not  rest  on  a  single  frail  and 
dying  life  ? 

It  was  clear  that  the  first  condition  of  a  union,  which 
time  could  not  destroy,  nor  shock  of  circumstance  wreck, 
was  loyalty  to  a  common  spiritual  ideal,  and  this,  no 
doubt,  existed.  "I  take  it  for  granted,"  Wesley  wrote, 
"  union  cannot  be  preserved  by  any  means  between  those 
who  have  not  a  single  eye.  Those  Avho  aim  at  anything 
but  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  salvation  of  men;  who 
desire,  or  seek,  any  earthly  thing,  whether  honour,  profit, 
or  ease,  will  not,  cannot  continue  in  the  Connexion  ;  it 
will  not  answer  their  design.  Some,  perhaps,  will  pro- 


390  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

cure  preferment  in  the  Church.  Others  will  turn  In- 
dependents, and  get  separate  congregations,  like  John 
Edwards  and  Charles  Skelton.  Lay  your  account  for  this, 
and  be  not  surprised  if  some  you  do  not  suspect  be  of  this 
number." 

But  some  practical  means  must  be  devised  for  giving 
effect  to  the  spiritual  unity  which  existed ;  and  some 
policy  must  be  agreed  upon  in  advance,  as  a  preparation 
for  Wesley's  death.  Wesley  suggests  a  plan : — 

"  On  notice  of  my  death,  let  all  the  preachers  in  England  and 
Ireland  repair  to  London  within  six  weeks.  Let  them  seek  God 
by  solemn  fasting  and  prayer.  Let  them  draw  up  articles  of 
agreement,  to  be  signed  by  those  who  choose  to  act  in  concert. 
Let  those  be  dismissed  who  do  not  choose  it,  in  the  most  friendly 
manner  possible.  Let  the  remainder  choose,  by  votes,  a  com- 
mittee of  three,  five,  or  seven,  each  of  whom  is  to  be  Moderator  in 
his  turn.  Let  the  committee  do  what  I  do  now :  propose  preachers 
to  be  tried,  admitted,  or  excluded.  Fix  the  places  of  each  preacher 
for  the  ensuing  year,  and  the  time  of  the  next  Conference."1 

This,  of  course,  was  government  of  what  may  be  called 
the  Venetian  type ;  government  by  a  committee,  certain 
to  become  a  clique.  It  could  never  have  supplied  the 
basis  of  a  great  and  free  Church.  The  place  of  the 
"  committee  of  three,  five,  or  seven "  was  taken  later  by 
the  Legal  Hundred:  and  even  this  device  would  have 
been  too  fatally  rigid  but  for  the  generous  interpretation 
given  to  it. 

Wesley  later  called  upon  his  helpers  to  sign  a  solemn 
"  Covenant  of  Agreement."  It  ran  as  follows : — 

"  We,  whose  names  are  underwritten,  being  thoroughly  con- 
vinced of  the  necessity  of  a  close  union  between  those  whom  God 
is  pleased  to  use  as  instruments  in  this  glorious  work,  in  order  to 
preserve  this  union  between  ourselves,  are  resolved,  God  being  our 
helper,  (i)  to  devote  ourselves  entirely  to  God,  denying  ourselves, 
taking  up  our  cross  daily ;  steadily  aiming  at  one  thing,  to  save 
our  own  souls,  and  them  that  hear  us ;  (2)  to  preach  the  old 
Methodist  doctrines,  and  no  other,  contained  in  the  Minutes  of 
the  Conference  ;  (3)  to  observe  and  enforce  the  whole  Methodist 
discipline,  laid  down  in  the  Minutes." 2 

1  Myles,  p.  129.  2  Ibid.,  p.  130. 


THE   DEED   OF   DECLARATION  391 

Wesley  was  never  in  a  hurry;  and  with  the  wise  in- 
stinct of  a  great  leader  he  was  content  to  wait  until  the 
slower  minds  of  his  followers  came  into  perfect  harmony 
with  his  own.  These  articles  of  agreement  were,  accord- 
ingly, brought  before  each  of  the  three  succeeding  Confer- 
ences, and  all  the  preachers  attending  them,  numbering 
one  hundred  and  one,  signed  it.  Here,  at  last,  then,  was 
formulated  a  policy  and  a  bond  which  provided  for  the 
organic  survival  of  Methodism  beyond  its  founder's  death. 
Fortunately  this  scheme  was  never  put  to  the  test  of 
actual  practice. 

Now  Wesley's  government  was  of  necessity  personal. 
He  was  a  spiritual  autocrat,  though  without  the  despotic 
temper  or  methods  of  an  autocracy.  And  not  content 
with  binding  his  helpers  together  by  a  formal  agreement, 
which  was  to  run  beyond  his  own  life,  he  looked  round 
him  for  a  personal  successor.  The  wisdom  of  that  search 
may  well  be  doubted.  There  could  be  no  second  Wesley. 
Even  if  a  leader  were  discovered  equal  to  Wesley  in  in- 
tellectual gifts,  these  would  not  give  him  Wesley's  place, 
or  Wesley's  authority.  That  authority  was  a  product  of 
history.  It  was  born,  not  of  Wesley's  personal  endow- 
ments, but  of  events,  and  of  his  personal  relations  to  his 
helpers.  They  were  his  spiritual  children,  and  his  power 
over  them  was  the  untransferable  authority  of  a  father. 

Wesley,  however,  in  search  of  a  helper,  turned  to 
Fletcher.  In  a  letter  to  him,  dated  June  1773,  he  tells 
him,  "  I  see  more  and  more  unless  there  be  one  leader,  the 
work  can  never  be  carried  on.  The  body  of  the  preachers 
are  not  united,  nor  will  any  part  of  them  submit  to  the 
rest.  Either  there  must  be  one  to  preside  over  all,  or  the 
work  will  indeed  come  to  an  end."  And  this,  it  must  be 
noted,  is  after  the  "articles  of  agreement"  had  been 
drawn  up  and  signed !  There  was  much  of  unregenerate 
human  nature  still  surviving,  even  in  this  order  of  saintly 
men! 

Wesley  proceeds  to  describe,  with  almost  amusing  detail, 
the  sort  of  man  his  successor  must  be: — 


"  He  must  be  a  man  of  faith  and  love,  and  one  that  has  a  single 
eye  to  the  advancement  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  He  must  have  a 
clear  understanding ;  a  knowledge  of  men  and  things,  particularly 


392  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

of  the  Methodist  doctrine  and  discipline ;  a  ready  utterance ; 
diligence  and  activity,  with  a  tolerable  share  of  health.  There 
must  be  added  to  these,  favour  with  the  people,  with  the 
Methodists  in  general.  For,  unless  God  turn  their  eyes  and 
their  hearts  towards  him,  he  will  be  quite  incapable  of  the  work. 
He  must  likewise  have  some  degree  of  learning ;  because  there  are 
many  adversaries,  learned  as  well  as  unlearned,  whose  mouths 
must  be  stopped.  But  this  cannot  be  done  unless  he  be  able  to 
meet  them  on  their  own  ground." l 

Then,  writing  to  Fletcher,  Wesley  goes  on  to  ask,  "  Has 
God  provided  one  so  qualified  ?  Who  is  he  ?  THOU  ART 
THE  MAN  ! "  he  cries.  He  calls  upon  Fletcher,  "  without 
conferring  with  flesh  and  blood,"  to  "  come  and  strengthen 
the  hands,  comfort  the  heart,  and  share  the  labour  of  your 
affectionate  friend  and  brother." 

Wesley  held  Fletcher  in  an  esteem  which  at  this  dis- 
tance of  time  seems  extravagant.  He  compares  him  with 
Whitefield — to  Whitefield's  disadvantage  :  "  He  was  full 
as  much  called  to  sound  an  alarm  through  all  the  nation 
as  Mr.  Whitefield  himself;  nay,  he  was  far  better  qualified 
for  that  important  work.  He  had  a  far  more  striking 
person ;  equal  good  breeding ;  an  equally  winning  address ; 
together  with  a  richer  flow  of  fancy ;  a  stronger  under- 
standing; a  far  greater  treasure  of  learning,  both  in 
language,  philosophy,  philology,  and  divinity ;  and  above 
all,  a  more  deep  and  constant  communion  with  the  Father, 
and  with  the  Son  Jesus  Christ." 2 

Fletcher's  fragile  body,  of  course,  could  not  have  sus- 
tained for  a  single  week  the  strain  of  labour  under  which 
Whitefield  lived  for  nearly  forty  years;  nor  could  he 
sway  crowds  in  Whitefield's  overwhelming  fashion.  But 
Fletcher's  charm  for  Wesley  is  perfectly  intelligible.  He 
had  spiritual  gifts  which  Wesley  himself  lacked — a  glow  of 
rapture,  and  of  adoration,  a  constantly  burning  fire  of 
spiritual  emotion,  to  which  Wesley  could  never  pretend. 
Wesley  describes  in  more  than  one  well-known  passage 
his  own  sober-coloured  and  permanent  spiritual  mood. 
To  a  man  of  his  temperament  Fletcher's  ardours  had 
the  office  of  a  cheerful  and  ever-burning  fire.  He  brought 
with  him  the  glow  of  a  spiritual  summer.  Fletcher,  too, 

1  Smith,  p.  456.  2  Tyerman,  iii.  p.  150. 


THE    DEED    OF    DECLARATION  393 

reinforced  the  spiritual  side  of  Wesley's  character  by  that 
strange  atmosphere,  as  from  other  worlds,  which  attended 
him.  A  description  survives  of  a  memorable  visit  Fletcher 
paid  to  one  ot  the  Conferences,  which  illustrates,  if  it 
aoes  not  explain,  the  strange  spiritual  influence  which 
seemed  to  radiate  from  him.  Fletcher,  emaciated,  feeble 
and  ghostlike,  entered  the  Conference  leaning  on  the  arm 
of  his  host,  Mr.  Ireland. 

"In  an  instant  the  whole  assembly  stood  up,  and  Wesley  ad- 
vanced to  meet  his  almost  seraphic  friend.  The  apparently  dying 
man  began  to  address  the  brave  itinerants,  and,  before  he  had 
uttered  a  dozen  sentences,  one  and  all  were  bathed  in  tears. 
Wesley,  fearing  that  Fletcher  was  speaking  too  much,  abruptly 
knelt  at  his  side  and  began  to  pray.  Down  fell  the  whole  of 
Wesley's  preachers,  and  joined  in  the  devotion  of  their  great 
leader." l 

It  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that  Wesley  wanted  the 
permanent  companionship  of  a  soul  like  that  of  Fletcher, 
and  looked  on  Fletcher  as  the  fittest  man  to  be  his 
successor.  Fletcher's  easily  alarmed  modesty,  indeed, 
might  well  have  made  him  recoil  from  any  pretence  of 
possessing  that  splendid  catalogue  of  gifts  and  graces 
which  Wesley  declared  to  be  necessary  for  his  successor. 
But  another  set  of  virtues — his  loyalty  to  any  call  of  duty, 
his  habit  of  intellectual  obedience  to  Wesley — made  him 
listen  assentingly  to  his  great  leader's  call.  His  reply 
ran :  "  Should  Providence  call  you  first,  I  shall  do  my 
best,  with  the  Lord's  assistance,  to  help  your  brother 
to  cover  up  the  wreck  and  keep  together  those  who  are 
not  absolutely  bent  to  throw  away  the  Methodist  doctrine 
and  discipline." 

But  these  words  hardly  meant  all  they  seemed  to  ex- 
press. Fletcher  was  willing  to  be  a  travelling  assistant  to 
Wesley,  but  as  he  reflected  on  the  task  of  becoming  his 
ecclesiastical  heir,  his  modest  nature  took  alarm.  On 
June  9,  1776,  he  writes  to  Wesley  telling  him  that  "  Your 
recommending  me  to  the  societies  as  one  who  might 
succeed  you  is  a  step  to  which  I  can  by  no  means  consent. 
It  would  make  me  take  my  horse  and  gallop  away." 

Fletcher  was  not  to  be  Wesley's  successor.     He  married 

1  Tyerman,  iii.  247. 


394  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Miss  Bosanquet  on  November  12,  1781,  and  marriage  with 
him,  as  with  Charles  Wesley,  was  fatal  to  any  wide  flight 
of  labours  as  an  evangelist.  The  taint  of  consumption, 
moreover,  was  in  his  blood,  and  he  died  only  four  years 
afterwards. 

But  just  when  Fletcher's  failing  health  and  invincible 
shrinking  from  a  task  so  great  made  it  clear  he  could  be 
neither  Wesley's  assistant  nor  his  successor,  Providence 
raised  up  a  helper  who,  for  the  remainder  of  Wesley's 
life,  was  to  share  with  him  the  great  task  of  administering 
the  discipline  and  shaping  the  policy  of  Methodism. 

In  1776  Wesley,  while  conducting  a  series  of  meetings 
in  the  West,  met  with  Dr.  Coke,  who  had  just  been  dis- 
missed from  his  curacy  for  employing  in  it  many  of 
Wesley's  own  methods.  Coke  was  of  an  ardent  and 
generous  temperament,  with  something  more  than  a  touch 
of  natural  genius.  He  was  a  Welshman,  short-necked, 
short-bodied,  big-brained ;  a  gentleman,  a  scholar,  and  a 
man  of  means.  He  had  a  personal  fortune  of  £1200  a 
year.  He  was  twice  married,  and  each  wife  brought  him 
a  fortune.  At  his  ordination  he  was  an  arid  High  Church- 
man, who  would  not  allow  a  Dissenter  to  defile  his  thresh- 
old by  crossing  it.  But  a  brother  clergyman  lent  him 
Wesley's  Sermons  and  Journals,  and  they  deeply  stirred 
him.  They  were  a  revelation  of  possibilities  in  religion 
hitherto  not  only  unattained,  but  even  unguessed.  Coke, 
in  a  state  of  spiritual  disquiet,  came  to  London.  He  fell 
under  Maxfield's  influence,  and  was  sufficiently  broken  in 
pride  to  learn  of  a  godly  layman  the  secret  of  faith  in 
Christ.  He  had  all  the  fire  and  glow  natural  to  the  Welsh 
genius,  and  religion  for  him  became  at  once  an  ardent 
spiritual  flame — a  rebuke  to  all  colder  spirits.  He  went 
back  to  his  Somersetshire  parish,  and  toiled  in  it  with  an 
impetuous  zeal  too  great  for  his  astonished  parishioners. 
They  ended  by  drowning  his  voice  in  his  own  parish  church 
with  the  help  of  the  church  bells.  He  was  presently  dis- 
missed from  his  curacy.  Shortly  after  he  met  Wesley. 
"  I  had  much  conversation  with  him,"  records  Wesley, 
"  and  a  union  then  began  which  I  trust  shall  never  end." 

Coke  was  admirably  fitted  to  be  Wesley's  alter  ego. 
Like  him,  he  was  a  University  man,  with  the  habits  of  a 
scholar  and  the  refinements  of  a  gentleman.  Like  him, 


THE   DEED    OF    DECLARATION  395 

too,  he  was  a  tireless  evangelist,  and  was  capable  of  a 
sustained  energy  of  labour  which  approached,  if  it  did  not 
rival,  that  of  Wesley  himself.  And  there  is  something 
almost  dramatically  opportune  in  the  appearance  of  Coke. 
He  was  not  only  the  exact  man  wanted,  but  he  appeared 
at  exactly  the  right  moment.  Many  of  the  great  problems 
of  Methodism  were  already  solved.  It  had  found,  and 
formulated,  its  theology.  After  1771  the  Minutes  of  the 
Conference  record  no  excursion  into  doctrine  of  any  sort. 
Its  ecclesiastical  forms  and  policy,  too,  had  already  been 
shaped  by  force  of  circumstances.  It  possessed  an  unsur- 
passed hymnology.  But  the  question  had  yet  to  be  solved 
whether  Methodism  should  be  provincial  or  imperial, 
limited  to  a  group  of  islands  or  a  force  touching  all  lands. 
It  was  at  the  moment  visibly  in  peril  of  becoming  paro- 
chial. Wesley  was  so  absorbed  in  the  three  kingdoms  that 
he  had  practically  no  vision  for  what  lay  beyond  them. 

But  Coke  had  the  qualities  which  Wesley  lacked.  He 
was  Wesley's  complement.  He  was  not  simply  an  ardent 
evangelist,  a  great  administrator,  with  a  genius  for  manag- 
ing men;  he  had  what  Wesley  wanted — imagination. 
He  saw  earlier  than  Wesley  himself,  and  with  larger  and 
surer  vision,  to  what  Methodism  would  grow.  He  saw 
more  than  the  three  kingdoms.  He  saw  America,  India, 
the  West  Indies.  So  he  became  what  has  been  called 
"  the  foreign  minister  of  Methodism."  He  founded  its 
missions,  and  for  years  shaped  their  policy. 

Wesley  entrusted  him  with  great  responsibilities.  He 
sent  him,  for  example,  in  1782,  to  Ireland  to  preside  at  the 
Conference  there,  and  for  years  not  Wesley,  but  Coke, 
presided  in  that  Conference.  Coke  itinerated  on  an  even 
larger  field  than  Wesley.  Wesley  could  not,  or  would  not, 
visit  America,  but  he  sent  Coke  there  again  and  again  as 
his  spokesman  and  representative ;  and  he  crossed  the 
Atlantic,  in  those  days  of  small  ships  and  long  voyages, 
no  less  than  eighteen  times,  and  all  at  his  own  expense. 
He  was  sent  out  to  shape,  with  Asbury's  companionship, 
the  outlines  of  a  church  destined  to  outbulk  in  scale 
British  Methodism  itself. 

But  not  even  the  great  field  of  the  United  States  was 
large  enough  for  Coke's  zeal.  He  planted  missions  in 
the  West  Indies,  and  before  his  death  they  numbered 


396  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

15,000  members.  He  outlived  Wesley  by  more  than 
twenty  years,  and  when  an  old  man  of  seventy  he 
appeared  in  the  Wesleyan  Conference  and  pleaded  to  be 
sent  to  India  to  found  a  mission  there.  There  were  no 
funds  to  start  such  a  mission,  but  Coke  found  £6000  of 
his  own  for  that  purpose.  He  sailed  with  a  small  com- 
pany of  helpers,  and  died  on  the  voyage.  He  was  found 
dead  in  his  cabin  one  morning,  with  a  placid  smile  on  his 
face.  And,  fitly  enough,  the  body  of  that  tireless  and 
daring  servant  of  Christ's  Gospel  found  its  resting-place 
in  that  "  vast  and  wandering  grave  " — the  sea. 

Methodism  is  the  product  of  many  forces.  Whitefield 
set  it  the  example  of  an  heroic  aggressiveness,  Fletcher 
coloured  its  theology,  Charles  Wesley  taught  it  to  sing, 
John  Wesley  was  the  central  flame  of  its  zeal,  and  the 
shaping  brain  of  its  ecclesiastical  form.  But  Coke  gave 
it  geographical  range.  He  forbade  it  to  be  insular. 

In  the  meantime  a  great  legal  question,  on  which 
turned  the  future  of  Methodism,  had  to  be  settled.  By 
1784  there  were  359  Methodist  chapels  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  On  what  legal  title  was  this  great  mass  of 
property  held;  and  what  was  Wesley's  legal  relation 
to  their  use  ?  Wesley's  plans  seldom  ran  beyond  the 
immediate  thing  in  hand.  When,  in  1739,  the  first 
preaching-house  at  Bristol  was  erected,  it  was  proposed 
to  draw  up  the  deed  of  trust  "  on  the  Presbyterian  plan," 
giving  the  trustees,  that  is,  the  right  of  determining  who 
should  use  the  building.  This,  of  course,  involved  the 
whole  question  of  the  appointment  of  ministers  to  the 
chapels ;  and  Whitefield,  more  alert  at  this  point  than  even 
his  great  comrade,  wrote  to  Wesley  telling  him :  "  If  the 
trustees  are  to  name  the  preachers,  they  may  even  exclude 
you  from  the  house  you  have  built.  Pray  let  the  deed 
be  immediately  cancelled."  This  was  done,  and  so  a 
great  blunder  was  escaped. 

But  Wesley  had  to  adopt  some  general  rule  with  regard 
to  his  chapels.  A  trust-deed  was  drawn  up,  providing 
that  the  trustees  should  permit  Wesley  himself,  or  such 
persons  as  he  appointed,  to  have  free  use  of  these  premises. 
Charles  Wesley  and  William  Grimshaw  were,  if  they  out- 
lived Wesley,  to  have  the  same  rights.  After  their  death 
the  chapels  were  to  be  held  in  trust  for  the  sole  use  of 


THE   DEED    OF   DECLARATION  397 

such  preachers  as  might  be  appointed  by  "the  yearly 
Conference  of  the  people  called  Methodists." 

This  deed  was  supposed  to  be  effective  and  final,  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  contained  one  fatal  flaw.  The 
"  yearly  Conference  of  the  people  called  Methodists  "  had 
no  legal  existence  or  definition.  It  was  not  an  entity  that 
could  sue  or  be  sued.  It  was  a  fluctuating  body,  consist- 
ing of  such  preachers  as  Wesley  himself  chose  each  year 
to  confer  with  him.  "  All  this  time,"  said  Wesley,  "  it 
depended  on  me  alone,  not  only  what  persons  should 
constitute  the  Conference,  but  whether  there  should  be 
any  Conference  at  all.  This  lay  wholly  in  my  own  breast ; 
neither  the  preachers  nor  the  people  having  any  part  or 
lot  in  the  matter." 

But  a  body  of  this  vague  and  unsettled  character,  it  is 
plain,  was  not  a  legal  corporation.  It  was  little  better 
than  a  yearly  accident.  How  could  a  quite  undefined 
gathering  of  this  kind  exercise  the  tremendous  power 
of  determining,  year  by  year,  who  should  exercise  pastoral 
authority,  and  discharge  pastoral  functions,  in  all  the 
chapels  of  Methodism  ?  It  was  essential  not  only  to  the 
peace  but  to  the  continued  existence  of  Methodism  that 
the  Conference,  the  centre  of  all  power,  the  supreme 
instrument  of  government,  should  be  legally  defined. 

Many  legal  devices  were  suggested:  the  creation  of  a 
single  board  of  trustees,  in  which  all  chapels  might  be 
vested  ;  the  collection  of  all  trusts,  deeds,  in  a  single  office, 
&c.  But  such  plans  did  not  provide  for  the  supreme 
necessity  of  the  case,  the  continuity  and  corporate  ex- 
istence of  a  living  assembly.  The  Conference  itself  was 
wiser  than  Wesley  in  this  matter,  and  urged  him  to  have 
an  instrument  prepared,  defining  and  erecting  into  a  legal 
entity  "  the  Conference  of  the  people  called  Methodists." 
So  far,  it  was  little  better  than  a  phrase.  An  undying 
corporation  must  take  its  place. 

Accordingly,  on  February  28,  1784,  Wesley  executed 
the  legal  document  on  which  Methodism  stands — the 
"  Model  Deed  "  or  "  Deed  of  Declaration."  A  hundred 
preachers,  duly  named,  were  declared  to  constitute  the 
Conference.  In  this  body  was  vested  the  power  of  the 
appointment  of  all  ministers  to  their  spheres  of  work 
which  Wesley  himself  had  hitherto  exercised.  The  "Legal 


398  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Hundred,"  as  it  is  called,  has  the  power  of  filling  its  own 
ranks  year  by  year.  It  is  thus  a  continuous  entity,  and 
secures  continuity  of  legal  existence  to  the  governing 
body  of  the  Church.  All  chapels  are  held  in  trust  for  this 
corporation,  and  subject  to  its  authority.  Elsewhere  than 
in  Great  Britain  the  various  Methodist  Conferences  are 
constituted  by  Act  of  Parliament.  But  in  Great  Britain 
Wesley's  Legal  Hundred  is  still  the  instrument  by  which 
the  Conference  is  kept  in  effective  existence. 

The  Deed  of  Declaration  settled  for  ever  great  legal 
difficulties ;  but  it  created,  at  the  moment,  some  bitter 
personal  disputes. 

Wesley  hesitated  long,  for  example,  as  to  the  number  of 
preachers  who  should  constitute  the  legal  Conference. 
The  number  was  finally  settled  at  a  hundred.  Then  came 
the  question  of  who  were  to  form  the  list.  Wesley  at  last 
wrote  down  a  hundred  names  with  his  own  hand.  But 
this  arrangement  left  many  preachers  out,  and  the  ex- 
cluded men  were  indignant.  One  hundred  men  were 
named  in  the  Deed,  and  ninety-one  left  unnamed,  and  the 
relation  betwixt  the  two  groups  had  a  vagueness  which 
easily  bred  alarms.  All  had  hitherto  held  an  equal  place 
in  the  Conference,  but  the  Deed  seemed  to  rend  the  body 
in  two,  and  to  leave  every  second  man  outside  the  legal 
pale. 

Some  of  the  helpers,  including  the  two  Hampsons,  took 
an  offence  so  deep  that  they  left  Wesley  on  this  account. 
Coke  was  suspected  of  having  induced  Wesley  to  include 
only  a  hundred  in  the  Deed,  and  as  a  result  came  into 
much  temporary  unpopularity.  The  accusation  reached 
Wesley's  ears,  and  he  replied  in  emphatic  Latin,  "  Non 
vult,  non  potuit ! "  An  attempt  was  made  to  organise  the 
discontent  of  the  excluded  men  into  open  revolt.  Circular 
letters  were  sent  out  calling  upon  the  preachers  to  "  take 
a  stand"  at  the  next  Conference.  But  when  the  Con- 
ference met  Wesley  rose,  with  his  saintly  face  and  white 
hairs  and  frank  speech,  and  made  a  calm  and  persuasive 
explanation  of  his  act  and  of  the  reasons  for  it.  Then, 
coming  straight  to  the  point,  he  bade  all  who  were  of  his 
mind  to  stand  up.  They  rose  to  a  man ! 

Human  nature  counts  for  much,  even  in  good  men; 
and  there  was  some  real  peril  that  the  hundred  members 


THE   DEED   OF   DECLARATION  399 

of  the  Conference,  in  whom  was  vested  all  legal  power, 
might  claim  pre-eminence  over  the  other  hundred,  who 
were  left  without  legal  foothold.  So  the  very  document 
which  was  meant  to  bind  the  Conference  into  perpetual 
unity  might  rend  it  asunder.  Late  in  1785  Wesley,  who 
saw  this,  wrote  a  letter  which  was  to  be  read  to  the  Con- 
ference after  his  death.  The  letter  would  thus  come 
with  the  pathos  and  the  authority  of  a  message  from  the 
grave.  It  ran  :— 

"I  beseech  you,  by  the  mercies  of  God,  that  you  never  avail 
yourselves  of  the  Deed  of  Declaration  to  assume  any  superiority 
over  your  brethren,  but  let  all  things  go  on,  among  those  itinerants 
who  choose  to  remain  together,  exactly  in  the  same  manner  as  when 
I  was  with  you,  so  far  as  circumstances  will  permit. 

"  In  particular,  I  beseech  you,  if  you  ever  loved  me,  and  if  you 
now  love  God  and  your  brethren,  to  have  no  respect  of  persons 
in  stationing  the  preachers,  in  choosing  children  for  Kingswood 
School,  in  disposing  of  the  yearly  contribution  and  the  Preachers' 
Fund,  or  any  other  of  the  public  money ;  but  do  all  things  with  a 
single  eye,  as  I  have  done  from  the  beginning." 

That  letter  did  not  reach  the  first  Conference  after 
Wesley's  death  till  it  had  been  some  hours  in  session,  and 
had  already  passed  a  resolution  in  almost  exactly  the 
same  words.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  spirit  of 
Wesley's  message  has  ruled  the  administration  of  affairs 
in  the  British  Conference  ever  since.  It  has  grown  to 
be  a  tradition  that  has  the  force  of  law.  The  Legal 
Hundred  claims  no  separate  place  from  the  rest  of  the 
Conference.  It  exercises  no  independent  power.  It  is 
practically  a  mere  registering  machine,  the  instrument 
by  which  the  decisions  of  the  Conference  as  a  whole  are 
translated  into  legal  terms. 


FEW  things  in  ecclesiastical  history  are  stranger  than  the 
circumstance  that  a  century  after  Wesley's  death,  and 
when  one  of  the  greatest  Protestant  Churches  in  the  world 
bears  his  name  and  is  the  direct  fruit  of  his  work,  it 
should  still  be  a  matter  of  perplexed  debate  whether  he 
ever  intended  the  creation  of  a  Church.  Was  it — or  was 
it  not — his  purpose  that  Methodism  should  remain  an 
order  within  the  Anglican  Church  ? 

It  is  easy  to  dismiss  the  question  with  the  obvious 
generalisation  that  he  who  plants  the  acorn  must  be  held 
to  intend  the  oak.  But  the  puzzled  reader  wants  to 
understand  Wesley;  and  the  task,  looked  at  in  some 
lights,  is  not  easy.  Wesley,  it  is  true,  was  the  frankest 
of  men.  He  had  absolutely  no  reserves.  His  correspond- 
ence in  bulk  equals  that  of  Horace  Walpole,  and  is  in- 
finitely more  open  and  honest.  Wesley,  moreover,  in  his 
Journal,  has  photographed  not  merely  his  own  character 
and  work,  but  the  changes  of  almost  every  day  in  his  own 
moods.  Betwixt  his  conversion  in  1738  and  his  death  in 
1791  is  a  long  stretch  of  fifty- three  years,  and  through 
that  whole  period  Wesley  lived  in  a  blaze  of  publicity. 
Every  act  he  did  is  registered,  almost  every  word  is 
audible,  well-nigh  every  letter  is  preserved.  And  yet, 
after  reading  everything  Wesley  has  written,  and  studying 
everything  that  he  did,  doubt  is  possible  to  many  anxious 
souls  whether  Methodism  hi  becoming  a  Church  has 
wrecked  its  founder's  ideals  or  fulfilled  them.  If  John 
Wesley  came  back  in  the  flesh  again,  would  he  recognise 
his  own  work;  and  if  he  did,  would  he  embrace  it  or 
renounce  it  ? 

It  is  easy  to  quote  many  sayings  of  Wesley  which  can 
be  flung  as  reproaches  and  arguments  against  Wesley's 
Church  by  disputants  who  are  eager  to  prove  it  has  no 

400 


WESLEY'S  THEORY  OF  THE  CHURCH        401 

right  to  exist.  And  these  inconvenient  missiles  are  to  be 
found  not  only  in  the  utterances  of  his  earlier  years,  when 
hot  blood  ran  hi  his  veins  and  High  Church  prejudices 
coloured  his  whole  vision.  They  can  be  discovered  in  the 
later  years  of  his  life,  when  reason  was  cool,  and  when  his 
work  as  an  evangelist  had  reached  its  climax. 

It  was  in  1787,  within  four  years  of  his  death,  that 
Wesley  wrote  the  oft-quoted  sentence  which  at  least 
proves  that  he  had  not  the  vision  of  a  prophet :  "  When 
the  Methodists  leave  the  Church  of  England,  God  will 
leave  them."  A  year  later  he  declares :  "  The  glory  of  the 
Methodists  is  not  to  be  a  separate  body ; "  and  that,  "  the 
more  he  reflected  the  more  he  was  convinced  that  the 
Methodists  ought  not  to  leave  the  Church."  Still,  a  year 
later  (hi  1789)  he  declared  that  "none  who  regarded  his 
judgment  or  advice  would  separate  from  the  Church  of 
England."  What  could  be  more  emphatic  than  these 
statements?  If  the  quotations  could  stop  here  the  case 
would  be  closed. 

It  is  true  that  at  the  stage  of  these  sayings  the  Church 
of  England  had  forgotten,  in  large  measure  at  least,  its 
early  scorn  of  the  Methodist  revival.  It  had  begun  to 
dimly  realise  Wesley's  greatness  and  the  splendour  of 
his  services  to  religion.  The  church  doors  so  long  shut 
against  him  were  now  on  every  side  thrown  open.  Wesley 
himself,  his  head  white  with  the  snows  of  nearly  ninety 
years,  and  crowned  with  the  spiritual  honours  of  a  career 
so  memorable,  was  welcomed  with  veneration  everywhere. 
"  I  have  come  somehow,  I  know  not  how,"  said  the  puzzled 
Wesley  himself,  "to  be  an  honoured  man."  Bishops  no 
longer  attacked  him.  Clergymen  no  longer  headed  mobs 
to  break  up  his  services.  Never  again  would  a  drunken 
divine  thrust  him  from  the  sacramental  table,  as  had 
once  happened  at  Epworth.  And  this  new  mood  on  the 
part  of  the  Anglican  clergy  might  quite  naturally  have  in- 
creased Wesley's  always  strong  desire  to  keep  his  followers 
within  the  Church. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the 
emphatic  words  about  separation  from  the  Church  we 
have  quoted.  Those  sentences  are  perhaps  the  only 
sayings  of  Wesley  that  a  good  many  High  Churchmen 
know  by  heart,  and  they  derive  infinite  comfort  from 

2  c 


402  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

them,  while  they  probably  cause  not  a  little  disquiet  to 
some  good  Methodists  when  they  happen  to  hear  them 
quoted. 

But  then  it  is  just  as  easy  to  quote  a  chain  of  sayings  of 
an  exactly  opposite  character  from  Wesley's  lips  and  pen. 
"  The  uninterrupted  succession,"  he  declares,  "  I  know  to 
be  a  fable  which  no  man  ever  did  or  could  prove."  "  That 
it " — the  episcopal  form  of  Church  government — "  is  pre- 
scribed by  Scripture,  I  do  not  believe.  This  opinion, 
which  I  once  zealously  espoused,  I  have  been  heartily 
ashamed  of  since  I  read  Bishop  Stillingfleet's  '  Irenicon/  " 
"  Church  or  no  Church,"  he  says  again,  "  we  must  attend 
to  the  work  of  saving  souls." 

Sometimes  the  satire  of  mere  dates  is  very  cruel.  Thus 
on  December  27,  1745,  Wesley's  brother-in-law,  Hall,  wrote 
a  long  letter,  urging  him  to  renounce  the  Church  of 
England.  Wesley,  in  reply,  writes  a  letter  in  which  the 
High  Churchman  is  in  the  ascendant.  He  declares:  "We 
believe  it  would  not  be  right  for  us  to  administer  either 
baptism  or  the  Lord's  Supper  unless  we  had  a  commission 
so  to  do  from  those  bishops  whom  we  apprehend  to  be 
in  succession  of  the  Apostles.  We  believe  that  the  three- 
fold order  of  ministers  is  not  only  authorised  by  its 
apostolic  institution,  but  also  by  the  written  Word.  Yet," 
he  adds,  with  characteristic  frankness,  "  we  are  willing  to 
hear  and  weigh  whatever  reasons  you  believe  to  the  con- 
trary." Less  than  four  weeks  after,  however  (January  20, 
1746),  he  writes:  "I  set  out  for  Bristol.  On  the  road  I 
read  over  Lord  King's  '  Account  of  the  Primitive  Church.' 
In  spite  of  the  vehement  prejudice  of  my  education  I  was 
compelled  to  believe  that  this  was  a  fair  and  impartial 
draught  (draft) ;  but  if  so,  it  would  follow  that  bishops 
and  presbyters  are  (essentially)  of  one  order,  and  that 
originally  every  Christian  congregation  was  a  Church 
independent  of  all  others!"1 

The  irony  of  dates  in  this  fashion  is  often  discover- 
able in  Wesley's  acts  and  utterances.  In  April  1790, 
for  example,  he  wrote  the  famous  passage  which  has 
been  quoted  against  the  Methodist  Church  by  angry 
sacerdotalists  ever  since : — 

1  Journal,  p.  216. 


WESLEY'S  THEORY  OF  THE  CHURCH        403 

"'I  never  had  any  design  of  separating  from  the  Church. 
I  have  no  such  design  now.  I  do  not  believe  the  Methodists 
in  general  design  it  when  I  am  no  more  seen.  I  do,  and  will 
do,  all  that  is  in  my  power  to  prevent  such  an  event.  Never- 
theless, in  spite  of  all  that  I  can  do,  many  of  them  will  separate 
from  it  (although  I  am  apt  to  think  not  one-half,  perhaps  not 
one-third  of  them).  These  will  be  so  bold  and  injudicious  as 
to  form  a  separate  party.  In  flat  opposition  to  these,  I  declare 
once  more  that  I  live  and  die  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England, 
and  that  none  who  regards  my  judgment  or  advice  will  ever 
separate  from  it' " 

But  only  two  months  afterwards — in  June  of  the  same 
year — he  writes  to  the  Bishop  of  London :  — 

"  I  must  speak  plain,  having  nothing  to  hope  or  fear  in  this 
world,  which  I  am  on  the  point  of  leaving.  The  Methodists  in 
general,  my  lord,  are  members  of  the  Church  of  England.  They 
hold  all  her  doctrines,  attend  her  services  and  partake  of  her 
sacraments.  They  do  not  willingly  do  harm  to  any  one,  but  do 
what  good  they  can  to  all.  To  encourage  each  other  herein,  they 
frequently  spend  an  hour  together  in  prayer  and  mutual  exhorta- 
tion. Permit  me,  then,  to  ask,  'Cuibono?  for  what  reasonable 
end  would  your  lordship  drive  these  people  out  of  the  Church  1 ' 
Your  lordship  does,  and  that  in  the  most  cruel  manner ;  yes,  .and 
the  most  disingenuous  manner.  They  desire  a  licence  to  worship 
God  after  their  own  conscience.  Your  lordship  refuses  it,  and  then 
punishes  them  for  not  having  a  licence  !  So  your  lordship  leaves 
them  only  this  alternative,  '  Leave  the  Church  or  starve.'  And  is 
it  a  Christian — yea,  a  Protestant  bishop — that  so  pe  secutes  his 
own  flock?  I  say  persecutes,  for  it  is  persecution,  tor  all  intents 
and  purposes.  You  do  not  burn  them,  indeed,  but  you  starve 
them,  and  how  small  is  the  difference  !  And  your  lordship  does 
this  under  colour  of  a  vile,  execrable  law,  not  a  whit  better  than 
that  '  de  Tieretico  comburendo.' " 

Here,  by  Wesley's  own  testimony,  a  bishop  of  the 
Church  of  England  is  "  driving "  the  unfortunate  Meth- 
odists out  of  the  Church,  and  is  doing  this  "  in  the  most 
cruel  manner."  How  could  Wesley  himself  hope  they 
would  stay  in  the  Church  ? 

But  the  best  comment  on  Wesley's  strong  words  about 
not  separating  from  the  Church  of  England  is  found  in 
his  own  acts  at  the  very  time  these  words  were  written 
or  spoken.  Concurrently  with  these  very  words  he  took 


404  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

steps,  and  took  them  under  the  irresistible  compulsion  of 
events,  which  tended  to  separation,  which  practically  were 
acts  of  separation.  In  1784,  as  we  have  seen,  he  constituted 
Methodism  a  legal  entity,  with  assured  continuity  of  exist- 
ence. He  made  it,  that  is,  a  Church.  In  the  same  year 
he  ordained  Coke,  Whatcoat,  and  Vasey  for  America,  and 
this  with  full  knowledge  of  Lord  Mansfield's  dictum  that 
"  ordination  is  separation."  In  1785  he  ordained  some  of 
his  helpers  for  Scotland,  justifying  the  act  by  the  plain 
necessities  of  his  societies  there,  and  by  the  circumstance 
that  the  Anglican  episcopate  did  not  cross  the  Border. 
In  1787  he  licensed  many  of  his  buildings  under  the 
Toleration  Act  as  Dissenting  chapels.  In  1789  he  ordained 
some  of  his  helpers  for  England. 

All  these  were  acts  01  separation.  They  constituted 
Methodism  a  Church.  And  yet,  while  Wesley  was  per- 
forming these  very  acts  he  was  speaking,  or  writing,  words 
which  forbade  separation,  at  least  during  his  own  life! 
The  puzzle,  on  the  face  of  it,  is  very  great.  Is  it  to  be 
solved  by  charging  Wesley  with  inconsistency  or  insin- 
cerity ?  But  that  explanation,  at  least,  is  utterly  incredible. 
It  is  contradicted  by  Wesley's  whole  character  and  career. 

The  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  that  theory  of  the 
Church  which  Wesley,  since  his  conversion  at  least,  had 
always  held,  but  which  had  not  always  been  clear  to  his 
own  consciousness,  or  allowed  to  colour  his  speech  and 
determine  his  policy.  We  have  shown  how,  almost  up  to 
the  day  of  his  conversion,  Wesley  was  a  High  Churchman 
and  a  Ritualist  of  the  severest  type.  His  sacerdotalism 
had  running  through  it  a  strain  of  the  ascetic ;  it  glowed 
with  the  ardour  of  a  fanatic.  He  refused  the  Lord's 
Supper  to  all  who  had  not  been  baptized  by  a  minister 
with  due  orders.  He  rebaptized  the  children  of  Dis- 
senters ;  he  held  the  theory  of  the  Apostolic  Succession  in 
its  extremest  form. 

But  his  conversion  changed  the  whole  perspective,  not 
only  of  Wesley's  life,  but  of  his  theology,  and  of  his 
ecclesiastical  views.  All  his  High  Church  theories  were 
jettisoned.  Religion,  for  him,  was  no  longer  mechanical 
but  spiritual.  Ecclesiastical  formulae  and  methods  were 
but  as  husks  and  chaff  when  weighed  against  spiritual 
realities. 


WESLEY'S  THEORY  OP  THE  CHURCH        405 

Christ,  as  Wesley  now  saw,  was  present  in  His  own 
Church,  and  governed  it.  His  grace  did  not  trickle  exclu- 
sively through  some  poor  little,  uncertain,  and  solitary 
human  pipe;  it  did  not  depend  on  the  touch  of  a  par- 
ticular set  of  ordaining  human  hands  on  certain  human 
heads.  It  was  Christ's  direct  gift  to  the  personal  soul 
The  Holy  Ghost,  in  Wesley's  new  theology,  was  no  longer 
relegated  to  some  far-off  day  in  early  Church  history ;  the 
mind  of  that  Spirit  was  not  exclusively  expressed  in  cer- 
tain ancient  Church  usages.  The  Divine  Spirit,  the  Lord 
and  Giver  of  Light,  was  as  surely  present  in  the  Church 
of  the  eighteenth  century  as  in  the  Apostolic  Church. 
The  Day  of  Pentecost,  on  this  reading  of  history,  is  not  a 
particular  set  of  twenty-four  hours  in  Jerusalem  many 
centuries  ago.  It  is  to-day  !  Men  live  in  it.  The  winds 
of  Pentecost  no  longer  blow,  its  cloven  tongues  of  flame 
are  no  longer  visible ;  but  though  the  signs  given  to  the 
senses  of  man  on  that  far-off  day  in  Jerusalem  have 
vanished,  the  presence  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  Church 
is  continued.  So,  for  Wesley,  the  mechanical  High  Church 
theory  was  no  longer  credible. 

But  this  new  view  of  Wesley  about  the  Church  did  not 
at  once  find  full  expression.  It  was  not  clear  always  to 
his  own  consciousness.  He  continued,  at  intervals,  to 
talk  High  Church  language  long  after  he  had  renounced 
the  whole  High  Church  theory.  His  mind  on  this  subject 
was  a  sort  ot  palimpsest.  The  evangelical  theory  as  to 
the  Church  was  written  large  and  indelibly  upon  it,  to  be 
read  of  all  men.  But  hidden  beneath,  and  visible  to  those 
who  searched,  were  fragments,  in  dim  and  broken  syllables, 
of  the  old  and  renounced  High  Church  doctrine. 

The  key  to  Wesley's  apparently  contradictory  acts  and 
words  in  relation  to  the  Church  of  England  maybe  found 
in  his  famous  "  Twelve  Reasons  against  Separation,"  pub- 
lished in  1758.  The  opening  sentence  in  that  docu- 
ment defines  Wesley's  position :  "  Whether  it  be  lawful 
or  not,  which  itself  may  be  disputed,  being  not  so  clear  a 
point  as  some  may  imagine,  it  is  by  no  means  expedient  to 
separate  from  the  Established  Church."  Wesley,  that  is, 
made  expediency — the  question  of  more  or  less  practical 
efficiency — the  supreme  test  of  ecclesiastical  forms;  and 
that  position  is  fatal  to  the  whole  High  Church  theory. 


406  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

The  Twelve  Reasons  which  follow  all  belong  to  the  category 
of  expediencies  and  inexpediencies.  No.  8,  for  example, 
runs :  "  Because  to  form  the  plan  of  a  new  Church  would 
require  infinite  time  and  care  (which  might  be  far  more 
profitably  bestowed)  with  much  more  wisdom  and  greater 
depth  and  extensiveness  of  thought  than  any  of  us  are 
masters  of."  No.  10  runs,  "Because  the  experiment  has 
been  so  frequently  tried  already,  and  the  success  never 
answered  the  expectation." 

Charles  Wesley  added  a  note  saying  his  brother's  "  reasons 
against  our  ever  separating  from  the  Church  of  England  are 
mine  also.  I  subscribe  to  them  with  all  my  heart.  Only, 
with  regard  to  the  first,  I  am  quite  clear  that  it  is  neither 
expedient  nor  lawful  for  me  to  separate." l 

The  date  of  these  "  Twelve  Reasons  "  is  significant,  as  it 
shows  that  at  this  early  stage  of  their  work  the  two  brothers 
were  parted  from  each  other  by  fundamental  differences  in 
Church  theory.  John  Wesley  held  separation  to  be  ex- 
pedient ;  whether  it  was  lawful  or  not  he  declined  to  say. 
Charles  Wesley  is  quite  clear  that  separation  is  "  neither 
expedient  nor  lawful, "  and  that  sentence  marks  the  water- 
shed which  divides  two  irreconcilable  ecclesiastical  systems. 
For  Charles  Wesley  separation  was  a  sin  ! 

His  own  conduct,  of  course,  was  hardly  consistent  with 
that  heroic  doctrine.  He  was  guilty,  in  fact,  of  a  thousand 
acts  in  conflict  with  it.  He  was  the  first  of  the  brothers 
to  administer  the  Lord's  Supper  in  an  unconsecrated  build- 
ing. He  preached  and  administered  the  sacraments  for 
years  in  City  Road  Chapel,  yet  he  held  the  building  to  be 
such  an  ecclesiastical  offence  that  he  gave  directions  he 
was  not  to  be  buried  in  it. 

John  Wesley,  for  his  part,  refuses  to  pronounce  whether 
separation  is  unlawful,  "  a  point,"  he  says  drily,  "  not  so 
clear  as  some  may  imagine."  He  would  not  discuss  that 
abstract  question  at  the  moment ;  for  this  would  have 
been  the  signal  for  a  controversy  which  might  have  rent 
the  goodly  companionship  of  his  comrades  asunder.  But 
the  theory  as  to  the  Church  Wesley  expressed  at  this 
early  date  is  essentially  and  profoundly  anti-sacerdotal. 

It  is  possible  to  quote  from  Wesley's  writings  a  chain 

1  Smith,  p.  275. 


WESLEY'S  THEORY  OF  THE  CHURCH        407 

of  utterances,  calm,  reasoned,  and  positive,  and  running 
through  the  whole  stretch  of  his  public  work,  in  illustra- 
tion of  his  views  on  Church  order. 

Does  the  New  Testament,  for  example,  supply  a  single 
authoritative  pattern  of  Church  government  wnich  is  bind- 
ing on  the  universal  Christian  conscience,  and  outside 
which  are  to  be  found  only  the  uncovenanted  mercies  of 
the  Divine  Grace  ?  Says  Wesley : — 

"  As  to  my  own  judgment,  I  still  believe  '  the  Episcopal  form  of 
Church  government '  to  be  Scriptural  and  apostolical.  I  mean, 
well  agreeing  with  the  practice  and  writings  of  the  Apostles.  But 
that  it  is  prescribed  in  Scripture  I  do  not  believe.  Bishop  Stilling- 
fleet  has  unanswerably  proved  that '  neither  Christ  nor  His  Apostles 
prescribe  any  particular  form  of  Church  government,  and  that  the 
plea  of  divine  right  for  Diocesan  Episcopacy  was  never  heard  of  in 
the  Primitive  Church."1 

The  doctrine  of  the  succession  is,  on  the  sacerdotal 
reading  of  Church  order,  necessary  to  the  validity  of  the 
Christian  ministry;  but  that  doctrine  Wesley  absolutely 
rejects,  and  he  sees  with  characteristic  keenness  where 
the  theory  breaks  down  :— 

"  I  deny  that  the  Romish  bishops  came  down  by  uninterrupted 
succession  from  the  Apostles.  I  never  could  see  it  proved  ;  and,  I 
am  persuaded,  I  never  shall.  But,  farther,  it  is  a  doctrine  of 
your  Church  that  the  intention  of  the  administrator  is  essential 
to  the  validity  of  the  sacraments  which  are  administered  by  him. 
If  you  pass  for  a  priest,  are  you  assured  of  the  intention  of  the 
bishop  that  ordained  you?  If  not,  you  may  happen  to  be  no 
priest,  and  so  all  your  ministry  is  nothing  worth  ;  nay,  by  the  same 
rule,  he  may  happen  to  be  no  bishop.  And  who  can  tell  how 
often  this  has  been  the  case  1  But  if  there  has  been  only  one  such 
instance  in  a  thousand  years,  what  becomes  of  your  uninterrupted 
succession  ? " : 

Through  the  writings  of  Wesley  for  fifty  years,  to  sum 
up,  there  runs  a  chain  of  emphatic  utterances  which  prove 
that  the  High  Church  theory  was  an  offence  alike  to  his 
reason  and  his  conscience.  A  thousand  prepossessions 
and  prejudices,  of  course,  bound  him  to  the  Church  of  his 
birth  and  training.  The  whole  character  of  his  genius 

1  Works,  vol.  xiii.  p.  211.  •  Ibid.,  vol.  iii.  p.  44. 


408  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

made  him  averse  to  unnecessary  changes.  He  clung  to 
historic  forms  even  when  he  was  making  them  the 
vehicle  of  new  forces,  and  to  venerable  words  when  they 
were  charged  with  new  meanings.  But  he  never  ad- 
mitted that  separation  stood  in  the  category  of  a  sin. 
It  was  a  question  of  practical  advantage  or  disadvantage, 
to  be  determined  by  the  circumstances  of  the  moment. 
That  which  to-day  was  so  inexpedient  as  to  represent  a 
disaster,  might  to-morrow  be  so  expedient  as  to  become  an 
obligation. 

His  people,  he  declares,  "  will,  even  after  my  death,  re- 
main in  the  Church  unless  they  be  thrust  out ! "  And 
that  dreadful  and  cruel  contingency  became  a  fact.  They 
were  thrust  out !  They  were  being  thrust  out  even  while 
Wesley  lived.  And  yet  Wesley  himself  was  held  by  a 
hundred  forces  which  had  no  relation  to  conscience,  and 
sometimes  not  even  to  reason,  from  open  breach  with 
the  Church.  He  foresaw  the  possibility  of  separation 
from  the  very  beginning  of  his  work.  The  possibility, 
step  by  step,  became  a  probability.  It  grew  into  a 
certainty.  But  always  it  was  for  Wesley  himself  a  thing 
undesired;  to  be  approached  only  by  the  slowest  stages, 
and  only  as  compelled  by  the  logic  of  facts. 

It  is  almost  amusing,  indeed,  to  note,  as  we  have  shown, 
for  how  long  Wesley  talked  the  language  of  the  High 
Churchman,  after  he  had  utterly  cast  High  Church 
theology  overboard.  His  ecclesiastical  prejudices  gave 
an  accent  to  his  speech  and  governed  his  tastes  for 
years  after  they  had  been  renounced  by  his  reason  and 
conscience.  But  his  conversion,  we  repeat,  shifted  the 
whole  centre  of  his  theology.  From  that  moment  he 
saw  that  Church  forms  were  questions  of  expediency. 
Expediencies  and  inexpediencies  had  to  be  weighed 
together;  sometimes  the  scale  might  incline  one  way, 
sometimes  another.  That  it  finally  turned  in  the  direc- 
tion of  separation  history  proves.  And  while  Wesley 
himself  never  formally  left  the  Church  of  England,  he 
gave  to  Methodism  a  form  and  powers  which  meant 
separation. 

Wesley,  it  cannot  be  doubted,  lies  open  to  the  charge  of 
verbal  inconsistency.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  old 
mental  habits  clung  to  him,  old  verbal  formulae  crept  to 


WESLEY'S  THEORY  OF  THE  CHURCH        409 

his  lips  and  to  the  tip  of  his  pen  long  after  they  had  been 
drained  of  their  meaning.  The  influence  of  his  brother 
Charles  was  a  force  pulling  him  always  in  the  High 
Church  direction.  So  it  happened  that  at  intervals  he 
still  talked  like  a  High  Churchman  when  he  was  doing 
things — things  to  him  urgent,  inevitable,  sacred — which 
were  fatal  to  the  whole  High  Church  theory. 

The  relations  of  Wesley  with  the  Anglican  Church,  it 
will  thus  be  seen,  are  the  story  of  an  education.  We  have 
the  picture  of  an  eager,  logical,  and  intensely  earnest  char- 
acter breaking,  thread  by  thread,  the  bonds  woven  of  early 
training,  early  beliefs,  and  passionate  ecclesiastical  pre- 
judices, and  giving  effect,  though  slowly  and  reluctantly, 
to  his  deeper  convictions.  The  practical  note  in  Wesley's 
genius,  his  habit  of  taking  short  views,  and  of  dealing  with 
difficulties  only  when  they  became  concrete  and  urgent, 
makes  the  process  slow ;  while  his  frankness  and  directness 
of  speech  at  each  stage  of  the  process  supply  a  chain  of 
utterances  which  often  seem  in  conflict  with  each  other. 
Each  utterance,  indeed,  has  to  be  interpreted  by  its  date, 
and  read  in  the  light  of  the  particular  set  of  circumstances 
with  which  it  dealt.  His  very  honesty  to  the  mood  and 
circumstance  of  the  moment  is  sometimes,  indeed,  the 
real  explanation  of  some  saying  which  contradicts  another 
utterance  dealing  with  another  set  of  conditions.  And 
Wesley,  it  cannot  be  denied,  retained,  in  fragments  at 
least,  the  vocabulary  of  sacerdotalism  long  after  he  had 
cast  the  whole  sacerdotal  theory  resolutely  overboard. 

Who  studies,  in  a  word,  this,  the  most  keenly  criticised 
aspect  of  Wesley's  work,  finds  in  it  the  picture  of  a  man 
with  an  obstinate  High  Church  bias  drawing  him  in  one 
direction,  a  bias  due  to  birth  and  training  and  tempera- 
ment ;  whilst,  step  by  step,  led  by  Providence  and  com- 
pelled by  facts,  he  moves  on  a  path  which  leads  to  quite 
another  goal,  a  goal  undesired  but  not  wholly  unseen. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    FINAL    STEPS 

THE  question  whether  Wesley  intended  his  followers  to 
remain  a  society  or  to  become  a  Church  is,  as  we  have 
said,  one  of  purely  academic,  or  even  antiquarian,  interest. 
The  relation  of  Methodism  to  the  Anglican  Church  was 
decided  in  the  end  by  forces  outside  Wesley's  will.  Some 
of  these  forces  are  to  be  found  in  the  character  of  the 
clergy  of  that  day  and  the  policy  they  adopted.  The 
drunken  curate  who  at  Epworth  denied  Wesley  the  Sacra- 
ment in  his  father's  church ;  the  clergy  who  inspired  mobs 
to  attack  the  Methodists,  and  sometimes  led  them  in  the 
attack,  were  no  doubt  evil  exceptions  to  their  class.  But 
the  utterly  unspiritual  character  of  the  clergy  made  it 
impossible  to  leave  the  converts  won  by  the  Revival  in 
their  careless  hands.  To  have  done  this  would  have  been 
a  crime  against  human  souls.  Moreover,  the  great  mass 
of  the  clergy,  from  the  Bishops  downwards,  were  resolutely 
bent  on  driving  the  early  Methodists  out  of  the  Church. 
"  You  are  our  greatest  enemies,"  Prebend  Church  wrote 
to  Wesley  in  1 744 ;  and  that  dreadful  sentence  makes 
audible  what,  for  many  sad  years,  was  the  general  mind 
of  the  clergy  towards  the  Revival. 

"  It  was  not  in  the  power  of  the  Bishops  to  crush  the 
new  order,"  says  Miss  Wedgwood,  "  but  the  strange  ano- 
malies of  English  law  left  it  in  their  power  to  force  it 
to  become  a  sect."  No  religious  meetings  outside  the 
ordinary  services  of  the  Church  could  be  held  without 
a  licence  under  the  Toleration  Act;  and  those  taking 
part  in  such  meetings,  in  order  to  secure  the  right  to 
hold  them,  had  to  register  themselves  as  Dissenters. 
This  law  extended  to  America,  and  so  the  first  Methodist 
Church  in  the  United  States  was  adorned  with  that  very 
unecclesiastical  bit  of  architecture — a  chimney.  When  a 


410 


THE   FINAL   STEPS  411 

Methodist  church  was  built  it  had  to  disguise  itself  as 
a  house  in  order  to  sjecure  the  right  to  exist. 

It  can  easily  be  seen  what  a  formidable  weapon  such 
a  law  was  in  the  hands  of  the  clergy,  and  it  was  used 
against  the  Methodists  with  relentless  severity.  The  last 
important  letter  Wesley  wrote,  says  Miss  Wedgwood,  "  was 
a  remonstrance  addressed  to  a  Bishop  who,  by  giving 
information  against  all  Methodists  meeting  in  unlicensed 
houses,  and  getting  them  fined,  forced  them  to  apply  for 
a  licence  as  Dissenters." 

The  state  of  the  law,  and  the  temper  of  the  clergy  in 
the  use  of  that  law,  thus  compelled  Wesley,  in  even  the 
earliest  stages  of  his  work,  to  take  steps  which  were  in 
effect  acts  of  separation  from  the  Church  of  England. 
He  could  only  secure  for  his  helpers  the  most  rudimentary 
liberties  of  speech  by  labelling  them  Dissenters ;  and  so, 
in  1/48,  the  new  room  at  Bristol  was  licensed,  and 
Methodists  using  it  were  described  in  the  licence  as 
"  Protestant  subjects  dissenting  from  the  Church  of 
England." 

City  Road  Chapel,  from  1778,  became  Wesley's  head- 
quarters, and  it  was  in  itself  a  visible  symbol  of  the 
relation  the  Methodist  movement  has  assumed  towards 
the  Church.  It  was  an  unconsecrated  building;  but 
services  were  held  in  it  in  church  hours,  and  the  sacra- 
ments were  systematically  administered  there.  The  very 
building  was  thus  a  bit  of  concrete  dissent,  a  symbol  of  the 
new  Church  which  had  already  come  into  existence,  but  had 
hardly  attained  self-consciousness.  In  1784,  Wesley  writes 
in  his  Journal,  "  a  kind  of  separation  has  already  taken 
place,  and  will  inevitably  spread,  though  by  slow  degrees." 
"  Their  enemies,"  he  says  again,  "  provoke  them  to  it,  the 
clergy  in  particular,  most  of  whom,  far  from  thanking 
them  for  continuing  in  the  Church,  use  all  the  means  in 
their  power,  fair  and  unfair,  to  drive  them  out  of  it." 

The  question  of  the  sacraments,  however,  proved  the 
turning  point  in  the  relations  betwixt  Methodism  and 
the  Church.  The  Salvation  Army,  to-day,  treats  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  as,  at  best,  a  luxury, 
and  makes  no  arrangement  to  gather  its  converts  round 
the  table  of  the  Lord ;  and  this  is  a  fatal  defect  hi 
its  organisation.  But  Wesley  held  that  the  adminis- 


412  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

tration  of  the  sacraments  was  binding  on  the  Christian 
conscience,  and  he  required  his  converts  to  observe 
them  as  a  matter  of  duty  and  value  them  as  a  means  of 
grace.  But  they  must  resort  to  the  parish  church  in 
order  to  attend  the  Lord's  Supper ;  and  here,  too  often, 
was  found  a  clergyman  whose  character  was  an  offence  to 
morals,  or  an  intolerant  fanatic  who  drove  them  from 
Christ's  table  as  mere  intruders.  The  Wesleys  themselves 
repeatedly  suffered  that  indignity  in  their  own  persons. 
At  Bristol,  as  early  as  1740,  Wesley's  converts  were  re- 
pelled by  the  clergy,  on  an  agreed  plan,  and  with  un- 
relenting severity,  from  the  Lord's  table,  and  this  explains 
why  the  new  room  there  was  licensed  so  early  as  a 
dissenting  place  of  worship. 

But  Wesley's  instinct  for  order  made  it  intolerable  to 
him  that  the  Sacrament  should  be  administered  by  any 
one  save  an  ordained  minister.  At  Bristol  and  London  he 
was  able,  with  the  help  of  a  few  clergy  who  stood  by  him, 
to  maintain  the  regular  administration  of  the  sacraments. 
But  to  do  this  over  the  area  of  the  three  kingdoms  was 
practically  impossible;  and  in  America  geography  and 
history  alike  made  the  situation  incomparably  more  diffi- 
cult. Here  were  a  few  almost  accidental  clergy  scattered 
at  distant  points  over  the  area  of  a  continent.  Political 
passion  burned  like  a  flame  through  the  whole  community, 
and  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  these  clergy  were  in  open 
political  quarrel  with  their  own  flocks.  The  attempt  to 
keep  the  fast-growing  Methodist  Societies  dependent  for 
the  sacraments  on  a  handful  of  Anglican  clergymen  under 
such  conditions,  both  of  geography  and  politics,  was  idle. 
Then  came  .  the  War  of  Independence,  and  like  some 
fierce  whirlwind  it  drove  the  Anglican  clergy  from  the 
field  completely. 

Wesley,  as  we  have  seen,  appealed  to  the  English 
Bishops  to  ordain  at  least  one  of  his  helpers  for  the 
purpose  of  administering  the  sacraments  in  America, 
but  the  appeal  was  rejected.  The  Bishops  were  careless 
of  even  their  own  flocks  in  the  revolting  colonies.  They 
were  politicians  rather  than  pastors,  and  were  not  dis- 
posed to  exhibit  any  very  tender  anxiety  for  the  spiritual 
interests  of  mere  rebels.  On  the  High  Church  theory 
the  sacraments  are  essential  to  salvation ;  they  can  only 


THE   FINAL   STEPS  413 

be  administered  by  persons  duly  ordained,  and  in  the 
Apostolic  Succession.  To  refuse,  or  to  delay,  the  presence 
of  properly  ordained  clergymen  to  a  whole  community 
is,  on  the  sacerdotal  logic,  to  imperil  the  eternal  welfare 
of  human  souls.  Yet,  when  a  delegate  from  the  United 
States  came  to  England  to  procure  episcopal  ordination, 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  back  to  the  dying  souls  of  a  con- 
tinent the  mystic  grace  of  which  ordination  is  supposed 
to  be  the  exclusive  channel,  he  was  kept  knocking  at  the 
doors  of  episcopal  palaces  for  two  years.  Benjamin 
Franklin  wrote  in  characteristic  accents  of  common-sense 
on  the  situation :  "  A  hundred  years  hence,  when  people 
are  more  enlightened,  'twill  be  wondered  at  that  men 
in  America,  qualified  by  their  learning  and  piety  to  pray 
for  and  instruct  their  neighbours,  should  not  be  permitted 
to  do  it  till  they  have  made  a  voyage  of  6000  miles  to 
ask-  leave  of  a  cross  old  gentleman  at  Canterbury." 

Wesley  found  that  he  must  provide  for  his  own  flock 
in  America.  The  sacraments  must  be  maintained,  and 
they  must  be  administered  by  duly  ordained  men.  But 
Wesley  held  that  he  himself  was  as  much  an  episcopos, 
and  as  fully  entitled  to  ordain,  as  any  Bishop  in  the  land. 
"  Lord  King's  account  of  the  primitive  Church,"  he  says, 
"  convinced  me,  many  years  ago,  that  Bishops  and 
presbyters  are  the  same  order,  and  consequently  have 
the  same  right  to  ordain."  He  had  held  his  hand  too 
long,  to  the  sore  injury  of  his  Societies  in  America,  and 
at  the  risk  of  rending  Methodism  in  that  country  to 
fragments.  Accordingly,  on  September  10,  1784,  he 
ordained  Coke  as  Superintendent  or  Bishop,  and  What- 
coat  and  Vasey  as  presbyters,  for  America. 

This  act  plainly  brought  to  open  rupture  the  whole 
relations  of  Methodism  and  the  Church  of  England. 
Charles  Wesley  was  thrown  into  a  mood  of  frantic 
remonstrance : — 

"  I  can  scarce  believe  it  (he  wrote)  that  in  his  eighty-second 
year,  my  brother,  my  old,  intimate  friend  and  companion,  should 
have  assumed  the  episcopal  character,  ordained  elders,  consecrated 
a  Bishop,  and  sent  him  to  ordain  our  lay-preachers  in  America. 
How  was  he  surprised  into  so  rash  an  action?  Lord  Mansfield 
told  me  last  year  that  ordination  was  separation.  This  my  brother 
does  not,  and  will  not,  see ;  or  that  he  has  renounced  the  principles 


414  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

and  practice  of  his  whole  life ;  that  he  has  acted  contrary  to  all 
his  declarations,  protestations,  and  writings ;  robbed  his  friends  of 
their  boastings ;  realised  the  Nag's  Head  ordination  ;  and  left  an 
indelible  blot  on  his  name,  as  long  as  it  shall  be  remembered. 
Thus  our  partnership  here  is  dissolved,  but  not  our  friendship.  I 
have  taken  him  for  better,  for  worse,  till  death  do  us  part ;  or, 
rather,  reunites  us  in  love  inseparable." 

He  wrote  in  distressed  and  pathetic  terms  to  John 
Wesley  himself  :  "  Before  you  have  quite  broken  down 
the  bridge,  stop  and  consider.  Go  to  your  grave  in  peace, 
or  at  least  suffer  me  to  go  before  this  ruin.  So  much 
I  think  you  owe  to  my  father,  my  brother,  and  to  me, 
as  to  stay  till  I  am  taken  from  this  evil.  I  am  on  the 
brink  of  the  grave.  Do  not  push  me  in,  or  embitter  my 
last  moments.  .  .  .  This  letter  is  a  debt  to  our  parents, 
and  to  our  brother,  as  well  as  to  you." 

John  Wesley's  reply  is  calm,  but  unyielding  : — 

"I  will  tell  you  my  thoughts  in  all  simplicity  (he  writes  to  him 
on  August  19,  1785).  If  you  agree  with  me,  well.  If  not,  we 
can,  as  Mr.  Whitefield  used  to  say,  '  agree  to  disagree.'  For  these 
forty  years  I  have  been  in  doubt  concerning  that  question,  What 
obedience  is  due  to  '  heathenish  priests  and  mitred  infidels '  ? 
[A  line  of  his  brother's.]  I  have  from  time  to  time  proposed  my 
doubts  to  the  most  pious  and  sensible  clergymen  I  know.  But 
they  gave  me  no  satisfaction.  Rather,  they  seemed  to  be  puzzled 
as  well  as  me.  Obedience  I  have  always  paid  to  the  Bishops, 
in  obedience  to  the  laws  of  the  land.  But  I  cannot  see  that 
I  am  under  any  obligation  to  obey  them  farther  than  those  laws 
require. 

"  It  is  in  obedience  to  these  laws  that  I  have  never  exercised 
in  England  the  power  which  I  believe  God  has  given  me.  I 
firmly  believe  I  am  a  Scriptural  episcopos,  as  much  as  any  man 
in  England,  or  in  Europe.  For  the  uninterrupted  succession  I 
know  to  be  a  fable,  which  no  man  ever  did  or  can  prove.  But 
this  does  in  no  way  interfere  with  my  remaining  in  the  Church 
of  England,  from  which  I  have  no  more  desire  to  separate  than 
I  had  fifty  years  ago.  ...  I  no  more  separate  from  it  now  than 
I  did  in  the  year  1758.  I  submit  still  (though  sometimes  with 
a  doubting  conscience)  to  'mitred  infidels.'  I  walk  still  by  the 
same  rule  I  have  done  for  between  forty  and  fifty  years.  I  do 
nothing  rashly.  It  is  not  likely  I  should.  The  heyday  of  my 
blood  is  over.  If  you  will  go  on  hand  in  hand  with  me,  do.  But 
do  not  hinder  me,  if  you  will  not  help  me." 


THE   FINAL   STEPS  415 

Charles  Wesley  wrote  again,  declaring  he  was  filled 
with  alarm  at  "  an  approaching  schism  as  causeless  and 
unprovoked  as  the  American  Revolution,  and  at  your 
own  eternal  disgrace.  I,"  he  said,  "  creep  on  in  the  old 
way  in  which  we  set  out  together,  and  trust  to  continue 
in  it  until  I  finish  my  course."  Then  the  brother  hi  him 
breaks  out.  "We  have  taken  each  other  for  better,  for 
worse,  till  death  do  us — part  ? — no,  till  we  meet  eternally. 
Therein,  in  the  love  which  never  faileth,  I  am  your 
affectionate  friend  and  brother." 

John  Wesley  brought  the  correspondence  to  a  close 
by  saying,  "  I  see  no  use  of  you  and  me  disputing  together, 
for  neither  of  us  is  likely  to  convince  the  other."  Charles 
Wesley  had  disavowed  his  own  juvenile  line  about 
"  heathenish  priests  and  mitred  infidels,"  but  John  Wesley 
goes  on  to  say,  "  Your  verse  is  a  sad  truth.  I  see  fifty 
times  more  of  England  than  you  do,  and  I  find  few 
exceptions  to  it."  Then  he  adds :  "  If  you  will  not  or 
cannot  help  me  yourself,  do  not  hinder  those  that  can 
and  will.  I  must,  and  will,  save  as  many  souls  as  I  can 
while  I  live,  without  being  careful  about  what  may  possibly 
be  when  I  die." 

Wesley,  meanwhile,  had  published  a  statement  explain- 
ing and  justifying  the  American  ordinations.  It  runs  : — 

"BRISTOL,  September  10,  1784. — To  Dr.  Coke,  Mr.  Asbury,  and 
our  other  brethren  in  North  America.  By  a  very  uncommon 
train  of  providences,  many  of  the  provinces  of  North  America  are 
totally  disjoined  from  their  mother  country,  and  erected  into 
independent  States.  The  English  Government  has  no  authority 
over  them,  either  civil  or  ecclesiastical,  any  more  than  over  the 
States  of  Holland.  A  civil  authority  is  exercised  over  them  partly 
by  the  Congress,  partly  by  the  Provincial  Assemblies.  But  no 
one  either  exercises  or  claims  any  ecclesiastical  authority  at  all. 
In  this  particular  situation  some  thousands  of  the  inhabitants  of 
these  States  desire  my  advice ;  and,  in  compliance  with  their 
desire,  I  have  drawn  up  a  little  sketch. 

"...  The  case  is  widely  different  between  England  and 
North  America.  Here  there  are  Bishops  who  have  a  legal  juris- 
diction. In  America  there  are  none.  Neither  any  parish  ministers. 
So  that,  for  hundreds  of  miles  together,  there  is  none  either  to 
baptize  or  to  administer  the  Lord's  Supper.  Here,  therefore,  my 
scruples  are  at  an  end  ;  and  I  conceive  myself  at  full  liberty,  as  I 


416  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

violate  no  order,  and  invade  no  man's  right,  by  appointing  and 
sending  labourers  into  the  harvest. 

"I  have,  accordingly,  appointed  Dr.  Coke  and  Mr.  Francis 
Asbury  to  be  joint  Superintendents  over  our  brethren  in  North 
America ;  as  also  Kichard  Whatcoat  and  Thomas  Vasey  to  act  as 
elders  among  them,  by  baptizing  and  administering  the  Lord's 
Supper.  .  .  . 

"  If  any  one  will  point  out  a  more  rational  and  Scriptural  way 
of  feeding  and  guiding  these  poor  sheep  in  the  wilderness,  I  will 
gladly  embrace  it.  At  present,  I  cannot  see  any  better  method 
than  I  have  taken." l 

It  is  to  be  noted,  Wesley  ordained  Coke  as  "  Superinten- 
dent," not  as  Bishop.  He  knew  the  power  of  words,  and 
desired  to  avoid  the  use  of  a  term  sure  to  provoke  contro- 
versy. With  the  stubborn  conservatism  of  his  type,  too, 
he  was  anxious  to  preserve  old  verbal  forms,  even  when 
they  became  charged  with  new  meanings.  But  Coke  and 
Asbury  in  America  discovered  no  necessity  for  putting 
any  verbal  disguise  on  recognised  facts,  and  they  adopted 
the  term  Bishop.  It  is  still  amusing  to  read  Wesley's 
alarmed  comments  on  this  circumstance.  He  writes  to 
Asbury : — 

"  In  one  point,  my  dear  brother,  I  am  a  little  afraid,  both  the 
doctor  and  you  differ  from  me.  I  study  to  be  little ;  you  study 
to  be  great.  I  creep ;  you  strut  along.  I  found  a  school ;  you  a 
college  !  Nay,  call  it  after  your  own  names  !  Oh,  beware,  do  not 
seek  to  be  something !  Let  me  be  nothing,  and  '  Christ  be  all  in 
all!' 

"  One  instance  of  this,  of  your  greatness,  has  given  me  great 
concern.  How  can  you,  how  dare  you,  suffer  yourself  to  be 
called  '  Bishop '  1  I  shudder,  I  start  at  the  very  thought !  Men 
may  call  me  a  knave  or  a  fool,  a  rascal,  a  scoundrel,  and  I  am 
content ;  but  they  shall  never,  by  my  consent,  call  me  '  Bishop ' ! 
For  my  sake,  for  God's  sake,  for  Christ's  sake,  put  a  full  end  to 
this !  Let  the  Presbyterians  do  what  they  please ;  but  let  the 
Methodists  know  their  calling  better." 

That  letter  shows  how  complete,  on  certain  subjects, 
was  Wesley's  slavery  to  words,  even  at  this  late  period  of 
his  life.  He  could  do  bold  things,  revolutionary  things. 
But  in  characteristic  English  fashion  he  wanted  to  label 
them  with  tame  and  conventional  phrases. 

1  Smith,  p.  512. 


THE   FINAL   STEPS  417 

Having  adopted,  on  clear  and  reasoned  principles,  the 
policy  of  ordaining  his  own  helpers,  Wesley  steadily  pro- 
ceeded to  give  it  larger  application.  He  ordained  other 
helpers,  but  always  on  the  logic  of  necessity,  and  only  in 
the  order  of  necessity.  He  would  do  what  the  plain  facts 
of  each  case  required ;  but  still  with  as  little  disturbance 
of  existing  order,  and  as  little  shock  to  the  prejudices  of 
others,  as  possible.  In  1785,  "having,"  he  writes,  "with  a 
few  other  friends  weighed  the  matter  thoroughly,  I  yielded 
to  their  judgment,  and  set  apart  three  of  our  Avell-tried 
preachers,  John  Pawson,  Thomas  Hanby,  Joseph  Taylor, 
to  minister  in  Scotland."  He  further  recommended  to 
the  Scotch  Methodists  the  use  of  the  abridged  Common 
Prayer,  a  circumstance  which  showed  that  John  Wesley 
did  not  even  yet  understand  the  Scottish  character. 

Wesley  recites  the  reasons  which  moved  him  to  ordain 
these  three  helpers  for  Scotland.  There  could  be  no 
conflict  of  jurisdiction,  as  no  Anglican  Bishop  had  any 
spiritual  charge  beyond  the  Border.  Wesley's  further 
reasons  are :  ( i )  The  desire  of  doing  more  good ;  (2)  the 
absolute  necessity  of  the  case,  as  the  Scotch  ministers  had 
repeatedly  refused  to  give  the  Methodists  the  Sacrament 
unless  they  would  leave  the  Societies. 

In  1786  he  ordained  helpers  for  Ireland  and  the  West 
Indies.  On  November  3,  1787,  in  his  very  last  Journal 
occurs  a  very  notable  record  :  "  I  had  a  long  conversation 
with  Mr.  Clulow  (as  Attorney)  on  the  execrable  Act  called 
the  Conventicle  Act.  After  consulting  the  Act  of  Tolera- 
tion, with  that  of  the  tenth  of  Queen  Anne,  we  were  both 
clearly  convinced  that  it  was  the  safest  way  to  license  all 
our  chapels  and  all  our  travelling  preachers ;  and  that  no 
justice,  or  bench  of  justice,  has  any  authority  to  refuse 
licensing  either  the  houses  or  the  preachers." 

On  February  27,  1789,  Wesley  ordained  Alexander 
Mather  as  Superintendent  or  Bishop,  and  Thomas  Rankin 
and  Henry  Moore  as  presbyters,  for  England.  He  clothed 
them  with  power  to  feed  the  flock  of  Christ,  and  to  ad- 
minister the  sacraments  of  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper 
according  to  the  usages  of  trie  Church  of  England,  and 
within  the  boundaries  of  England.  And  he  set  apart 
Mather  as  Superintendent  or  Bishop  that  he  might 
ordain  other  helpers,  and  so  a  regular  ministry  in  the 

2  D 


418  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Methodist  Church  be  maintained  even  after  Wesley's 
death.1 

And  he  did  all  this  knowing,  in  Lord  Mansfield's  words, 
that  "  ordination  is  separation."  In  these  plain  and  great 
facts,  not  in  casual  phrases  picked  from  nis  letters  and 
Journal,  is  to  be  found  Wesley's  purpose  as  to  the  future 
of  Methodism. 

Wesley's  ordinations  are  explained  by  Knox,  in  a  letter 
which  Southey  published  as  an  appendix  to  his  biography, 
as  due  to  an  old  man's  failure  in  reasoning  faculties.  But 
this  explanation  proves,  for  the  High  Church  critics  who 
quote  it,  quite  too  much.  Wesley  ordained  Coke,  Vasey, 
and  Whatcoat  in  1784,  and,  on  Knox's  theory,  his  memory 
and  intellect  were  then  suffering  from  senile  decay.  But 
the  famous  Korah  sermon,  which  is  a  mine  of  delightful 
quotations  for  the  sacerdotal  critics  of  Methodism,  was 
preached  in  1789,  or  five  years  later,  and  must,  on 
Alexander  Knox's  logic,  represent,  still  more  completely 
than  even  the  much- challenged  ordinations,  the  decay  of 
Wesley's  reasoning  faculty ! 

The  Korah  sermon — a  sermon  on  the  ministerial  office 
— is,  of  course,  perfectly  consistent  with  Wesley's  whole 
policy.  It  was  preached  at  Cork  on  May  4,  1789,  and 
intended  as  a  rebuke  to  some  Irish  helpers  who  had  taken 
upon  themselves  to  administer  the  Sacrament  without 
Wesley's  authority.  "Where  did  I  appoint  you  to  do 
this  ? "  he  asks.  "  Nowhere  at  all.  In  doing  it  you 
renounce  the  first  principle  of  Methodism,  which  is  wholly 
and  solely  to  preach  the  Gospel."  Wesley  would  ordain 
his  helpers  to  administer  the  Sacraments  when  he  found 
this  to  be  necessary,  but  he  would  not  tolerate  his  helpers 
ordaining  themselves.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that, 
not  quite  three  months  before  he  preached  the  Korah 
sermon,  he  ordained  Mather  as  a  Superintendent  or 
Bishop,  and  Rankin  and  Moore  as  presbyters,  for  England. 

It  is  often  said,  in  spite  of  the  facts  which  are  here 
recited,  that  Wesley  never  intended  Methodism  to  be 
anything  more  than  a  society  within  the  Church.  He 
planned  it  as  a  society,  he  left  it  a  society ;  he  forbade  it 
to  be  a  Church.  The  answer,  of  course,  is  obvious  that 

1  Jackson's  "  Life  of  Charles  Wesley,"  p.  431. 


THE    FINAL   STEPS  419 

whatever  Wesley  intended,  history  has  proved  Methodism 
to  be  a  Church  in  the  largest  sense ;  and  its  founder,  like 
the  men  who  laid  the  foundation  of  the  great  American 
republic,  builded  better  than  he  knew. 

But  was  Wesley  deceived  by  a  phrase  ?  Did  he  look 
upon  the  great  spiritual  system  taking  shape  about  him, 
with  its  perfect  and  flexible  organisation,  as  a  mere 
"society,"  an  accidental,  or  at  least  temporary,  cluster 
of  unrelated  atoms  ?  In  his  famous  sermon  on  Schism 
Wesley  discusses  at  length  the  question,  What  is  a 
Church ?  "A  more  ambiguous  word  than  this  —  the 
Church  " — he  says,  "  is  scarcely  to  be  found  in  the  English 
language."  But  with  his  keen  logic,  and  his  terse,  nervous 
English,  Wesley  struck  out  all  ambiguity  from  the  word. 
"  The  Catholic  or  Universal  Church,"  he  says,  "  is  all  the 
persons  in  the  universe  whom  God  had  called  out  of  the 
world.  A  national  Church  is  that  part  of  the  great  body 
of  the  Universal  Church  which  inhabits  any  one  kingdom 
or  nation."  The  Church  of  England  was  a  national 
Church  in  that  sense.  But  what,  reduced  to  its  simplest 
and  imperishable  elements,  is  a  Church  ?  "  Two  or  three 
Christian  believers  united  together,"  Wesley  replies,  "  are 
a  Church.  A  particular  Church  may  consist  of  any 
number  of  persons,  whether  two  or  three  or  two  or  three 
millions." 

Wesley,  in  a  word,  drew  deep  and  clear  the  distinction 
betwixt  the  national  Establishment  and  a  Church.  They 
were  not  equivalent  terms.  Methodism  was  not  a  national 
Church ;  but  tried  by  the  tests  of  the  spiritual  order  to 
which  it  belonged,  it  was  a  true  Church.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  Wesley  often  uses  the  terms  "  Society  "  and  "  Church  " 
as  interchangeable.  His  obstinate  and,  on  the  whole, 
wise  mental  habit  of  using  old  terms,  even  when  they  are 
charged  with  new  meanings,  disguises  this  fact  from  many 
critics.  But  the  fact  is  beyond  doubt.  As  early  as  1749 
he  is  discussing  in  the  Conference  of  that  year  a  scheme 
for  linking  the  Societies  together.  "  May  not  that  in 
London,  the  mother  Church,"  he  asks,  "  consult  with  the 
others  for  the  sake  of  all  the  Churches  ? " l 

The   Societies,    already,   in    Wesley's   eyes,   were    true 

1  Minutes  of  Conference,  1749,  p.  44. 


420  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Churches  in  the  exact  sense  of  that  definition  of  a  Church 
which  we  have  already  quoted. 

For  Methodists  themselves  the  question  whether  Meth- 
odism is  a  true  Church  is  not  to  be  determined  by  the 
labours  of  antiquarians,  or  settled  by  quotations  and 
dates  from  Wesley's  Journal.  The  question  belongs  to 
another  and  a  loftier  realm,  and  is  determined  by  graver 
tests.  Let  the  essential  character  of  the  Methodist  revival 
be  remembered.  It  was  a  re-birth  of  the  spiritual  elements 
of  Christianity ;  a  new  manifestation  of  its  spiritual  force ; 
a  return  to  its  simpler  forms.  It  raised,  and  raises,  no 
question  as  to  the  mere  externalities  of  religion.  It  broke 
out  of  the  spiritual  realm ;  it  worked  by  spiritual  forces, 
and  for  only  spiritual  ends.  And  a  true  and  profound 
philosophy,  in  harmony  with  this,  underlay  the  whole 
movement  and  determined  the  ecclesiastical  forms  in 
which  the  new  spiritual  life  was  to  express  itself. 

In  what  may  be  called  the  grammar  of  Methodism  the 
emphasis  lay,  not  on  creeds,  or  symbols,  or  questions  of 
Church  polity  and  order.  It  rested  on  spiritual  quali- 
ties ;  on  the  relation  of  the  personal  soul  to  the  personal 
Saviour. 

Its  theology  stands  in  direct  relation  to  spiritual 
life.  Its  Church  polity  is  a  wedlock  of  vital  doctrines 
and  of  practical  experiences.  The  Church,  according 
to  its  definition,  is  spiritual  life — the  spiritual  life  of 
individual  souls — organised,  knitted  together  in  organic 
forms  for  ends  of  worship  and  service.  All  forms,  symbols, 
methods,  creeds  are  secondary  to  this,  and  are  of  value 
only  as  they  ensure  this. 

Let  it  be  asked,  why  does  a  great  writer  like  Isaac 
Taylor,  an  historian  who  is  also  a  philosopher,  and  who,  in 
a  sense,  is  a  severe  critic  of  Methodism,  yet  declare  that 
"  Methodism  is  the  starting-point  of  our  modern  religious 
history,"  and  that  "  the  events  whence  the  religious  epoch 
now  current  dates  its  commencement  is  the  field-preach- 
ing of  Whitefield  and  Wesley  in  1739."  It  is  because 
Methodism  set  in  true  and  spiritual  perspective  all  that 
relates  to  the  Church  and  to  religion.  In  the  Church  of 
that  sad  day  second  things  had  become  first.  The  ex- 
ternal was  more  than  the  spiritual.  Rites  and  symbols 
and  creeds  were  not  merely  means  to  an  end  greater  than 


THE    FINAL   STEPS  421 

themselves — the  creation  of  a  spiritual  life — they  were 
ends  in  themselves. 

Methodism  was  preceded  by  the  German  Reformation 
of  Luther,  and  the  English  Reformation  of  Cranmer.  But 
both  these  were  incomplete.  Luther's  Reformation  was 
marred  by  the  Papal  strain  left  in  it.  There  is  a  sacra- 
mentarian  taint  in  its  theology.  "It  began  in  ideas," 
says  one  keen  critic,  "  and  ended  in  force."  It  certainly 
was  a  reformation  arrested  in  mid-career.  The  English 
Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  in  the  main 
political.  It  left  State  and  Church  linked  together,  to 
the  injury  of  both.  How  imperfect  a  divorce  from  the 
Papacy  it  effected  is  proved  by  the  frequent  relapses  into 
Papal  doctrine  of  which  its  nistory  is  full.  Edward  VI. 
was  followed  by  "  Bloody  "  Mary,  Elizabeth  by  Charles  I., 
Cromwell  by  James  II.  and  Charles  II.,  of  whom  one 
died  a  Papist,  and  the  other  inverted  the  policy  of  Henri 
Quatre,  and  sold  a  kingdom  for  a  Mass. 

Anglicanism,  in  a  word,  with  its  sacramentarian  theology 
and  its  prelatical  rule,  and  the  Puritanism  of  the  Common- 
wealth, with  its  fierce  temper  and  political  leaven,  re- 
present the  swing  of  the  pendulum  to  opposite  extremes. 
Methodism,  on  the  other  hand,  with  all  its  limitations, 
aims  at  a  purely  spiritual  reading  of  Christianity.  Forms 
to  it  are  secondary  matters.  It  can  do  with  Bishops  or 
without  them.  The  Presbyterian  or  the  Episcopal  theory 
of  Church  government  may  be  equally,  or  unequally,  effec- 
tive ;  but  neither  is  mandatory.  The  fiercest  doctrinal 
controversy  in  Wesley's  life  was  that  concerning  Calvinism. 
But  when  he  abridged  the  "  articles  of  religion  "  for  his 
Societies  in  America,  he  phrased  them  so  as  to  leave  that 
great  controversy  wholly  untouched,  and  make  it  possible 
for  Calvinist  and  Arminian  alike  to  sing  the  same  hymns 
and  worship  under  the  same  church  roof.  Wesley  himself 
said  once  to  his  preachers,  "  I  have  no  more  right  to 
object  to  a  man  for  holding  a  different  opinion  from  my 
own  than  I  have  to  differ  with  a  man  because  he  wears  a 
wig  and  I  wear  my  own  hair,  though  I  have  a  right  to 
object  if  he  shakes  the  powder  about  my  eyes." 

Wesley  thus  was  a  great  religious  leader  to  whom 
spiritual  fact  was  everything  and  ecclesiastical  form 
nothing.  It  was  inevitable  that  he  should  be  careless 


422  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

as  to  the  exact  ecclesiastical  definition  of  his  own  move- 
ment. Was  Methodism  a  Church,  or  to  become  a  Church  ? 
If  so,  what  label  must  it  bear  ?  By  what  form  should  it 
be  governed  ?  These  were  questions  which  Wesley  was 
not  anxious  either  to  ask  or  to  answer.  He  postponed 
them  in  order  to  escape  controversy ;  he  left  them  to  be 
settled  by  history.  The  critics  of  after  generations  wage 
interminable  debate  on  these  points.  To  Wesley  himself 
any  importance  the  debate  had  was  due  to  the  persistence 
and  tyranny  of  old  mental  habits.  To  his  Church  the 
debate  has  neither  reality  nor  significance.  It  represents 
a  quarrel  of  ecclesiastical  antiquarians.  It  is  a  question 
which  history  has  settled  —  or  rather  God,  who  works 
through  history,  and  shapes  it. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE    EFFECTIVE    DOCTRINES    OF    METHODISM 

WHAT  we  have  called  the  doctrinal  secret  of  the  Revival 
has  already  been  discussed;  but  here  we  are  describing 
the  enduring  historical  result  of  the  great  movement,  the 
Church  into  which  it  crystallised ;  and  it  may  be  asked 
what  are  the  permanent  characteristics  in  teaching  and 
discipline,  in  belief  and  structure,  of  that  Church? 
"My  doctrines,"  said  Wesley  himself,  "are  simply  the 
common  fundamental  principles  of  Christianity."  Or,  to 
use  another  of  his  phrases,  "  they  are  the  plain  old  religion 
of  the  Church  of  England  "  ;  and  that  is  perfectly  true. 

Wesley  added  no  new  province  to  theology.  He  invented 
no  new  doctrine,  he  slew  no  ancient  heresy.  Whatever 
may  be  Wesley's  title  to  fame,  it  is  not  that  of  a  leader  of 
men  into  new  and  unguessed  realms  of  theological  specula- 
tion. It  is  sometimes  said  that  he  set  old  doctrines  in  a 
new  perspective.  He  changed  the  theological  emphasis  of 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles;  and  he  did  it  in  an  enduring 
fashion,  which  makes  it,  so  to  speak,  his  signature  on  the 
theology  of  his  Church  to-day.  As  far  as  this  is  true,  it 
applies  to  those  doctrines  which  touch  the  central  things 
ot  salvation — a  divine  redemption,  a  realised  pardon,  a 
present  and  conscious  salvation  from  sin.  At  these  points 
Wesley  certainly  drew  into  life  and  consciousness  many 
forgotten  truths  in  "  the  plain  old  religion  of  the  Church 
of  England." 

There  is  a  real — though  not  always  recognised — philo- 
sophy underlying  the  doctrinal  teachings  of  Wesley. 
They  constitute  an  interpretation  of  Christianity  which 
may  be  judged  of  as  a  whole.  To  describe  that  teaching 
fully  would  be  to  write  an  entire  system  of  theology,  and 
cannot,  of  course,  be  attempted  here.  But  it  is  worth 
while  to  offer  in  barest  outline  a  statement  of  what  may 
be  called  Wesley's  working  creed. 


423 


424  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Wesley  sums  this  up  himself  in  one  familiar  state- 
ment : — 

"  Our  main  doctrines,  which  include  all  the  rest,  are  repent- 
ance, faith,  and  holiness.  The  first  of  these  we  account,  as  it 
were,  the  porch  of  religion  •  the  next,  the  door ;  the  third,  religion 
itself." ! 

But  a  whole  theology  cannot  be  condensed  into  a  single 
metaphor  in  this  fashion.  Behind  the  metaphor  stands  a 
symmetrical  and  spacious  creed. 

Wesley  began  by  a  noble  conception  of  the  universe  as 
built  on  a  moral  plan  and  existing  for  moral  ends.  Its 
ideal  and  law  are  found  in  the  will  of  God,  its  Creator ; 
but  that  will  is  not  an  arbitrary  force.  Goodness  is  not 
goodness  because  God  chose  to  enact  it.  It  is  the  reflex 
of  an  eternal  necessity,  a  necessity  lying  in  the  very 
nature  of  God  Himself.  The  moral  law  Wesley  traced,  in 
Southey's  words,  "  beyond  the  foundation  of  the  world  to 
that  period,  unknown  indeed  to  men,  but  doubtless  en- 
rolled in  the  annals  of  eternity,  when  the  morning  stars 
sang  together."  As  Wesley  himself  put  it :  "  The  law  of 
God  is  supreme,  unchangeable  reason;  it  is  unalterable 
rectitude ;  it  is  the  everlasting  fitness  of  all  things  that  are 
or  ever  were  created." 

Man  was  created  under  this  law,  created  that  in  him  it 
might  find  its  fulfilment.  But  obedience  to  that  law  must 
be  the  voluntary  service  of  a  free  spirit.  So  Wesley 
believed  profoundly  in  the  doctrine  of  the  freedom  of  the 
human  will.  It  is  this  which  constitutes  man  a  moral 
agent.  The  denial  of  it  makes  goodness  impossible.  Set 
in  man's  nature  is  an  august  faculty  which  carries  with  it 
measureless  possibilities.  It  is  the  power  to  say  "  No," 
even  to  God,  and  through  the  gate  of  that  awful  power  sin 
comes  into  the  world.  But  it  is  also  the  power  to  say 
"  Yes  "  to  God,  and  so  to  render  Him  a  service  impossible 
to  suns  and  planets;  a  worship  unknown  to  the  whole 
material  universe  beside.  Man,  in  Wesley's  words,  was 
"not  a  clod  of  earth,  a  lump  of  clay  without  sense  or 
understanding,  but  a  spirit  like  his  Creator;  a  spirit 
endowed  with  a  free  will,  the  power  of  choosing  good  or 
evil,  of  directing  his  own  affections  and  actions." 

1  Stevens,  p.  327. 


THE   EFFECTIVE   DOCTRINES   OF   METHODISM      425 

And  in  his  first  choice  man  fell.  He  sinned ;  and  he 
incurred  the  one  inevitable  penalty  of  sin — death.  Death 
is  a  term  which  includes  many  meanings.  It  is  not  ex- 
hausted by  the  divorce  that  rends  the  body  and  the  un- 
dying spirit  asunder.  In  the  moment  of  sin  man  suffered 
that  most  dreadful  of  all  deaths — separation  from  God. 
So  he  became  liable  to  death  eternal.  And  as  he  was  the 
head  of  the  human  race,  and  the  seeds  and  souls  of  all 
mankind  were  contained  in  him,  the  moral  standing  of 
the  whole  human  race  was  affected  by  his  act. 

Wesley  did  not,  of  course,  believe  in  any  transfer  of 
personal  guilt.  If  any  man  perishes  it  will  be  because  he 
himself  has  broken  God's  law,  not  because  some  one  else — 
Adam,  or  any  other — has  broken  it.  The  guilt  of  wrong- 
doing lies  eternally  and  solely  on  the  wrongdoer.  The 
doctrine  that  the  sin  of  Adam  constitutes  in  any  literal 
sense  the  guilt  of  any  of  his  children  was  to  Wesley, 
as  it  must  be  to  the  healthy  reason  of  all  men,  abhorrent. 
"  Whatsoever,"  says  Wesley,  "it  hath  pleased  God  to  do 
of  His  sovereign  pleasure  as  Creator,  He  will  judge  the 
world  in  righteousness,  and  every  man  therein  according 
to  the  strictest  justice.  He  will  punish  no  man  for  doing 
anything  which  he  could  not  possibly  avoid,  neither  for 
omitting  anything  he  could  not  possibly  do."  Yet  many 
of  the  consequences  of  wrongdoing  visibly  and  necessarily 
extend  to  others  than  the  one  actually  guilty  of  it.  The 
child  of  the  drunkard  is  not  burdened  with  the  guilt  of 
drunkenness ;  but  it  has  a  partnership  in  the  evil  conse- 
quences that  vice  creates.  Drunkenness  in  a  father  means 
hunger,  rags,  and  misery  for  the  child. 

Now  Wesley  believed  profoundly  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
Fall.  It  is  the  clear  teaching,  he  held,  of  Scripture.  It 
is  verified  in  the  personal  consciousness  of  each  man.  It 
is  the  one  fact  which  explains  the  moral  disorder  and 
misery  of  the  world.  The  evidence  that  the  human  race 
is  implicated  in  what  Newman  calls  "some  terrible  ab- 
original calamity  "  is  writ  large  not  only  on  every  page  of 
history,  but  on  every  issue  of  the  daily  newspaper.  But 
Wesley  never  separated  the  doctrine  of  man's  fall  from 
the  great  twin  doctrine  of  man's  redemption.  When 
Adam  sinned  the  terms  of  moral  probation  were  changed 
for  him  and  for  the  whole  human  race ;  and  the  new  terms 


426  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

are  those  of  redemption  in  Christ  Jesus.  Here  is  a 
sacrifice  for  sin,  given  in  promise  from  the  very  moment 
of  the  Fall,  which  opens  the  gate  to  forgiveness.  Here 
is  a  gift  of  divine  grace  through  the  Holy  Spirit  which 
makes  a  restored  character  and  a  holy  life  possible.  And 
looking  at  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall  through  the  lens  of 
redemption,  Wesley  found  in  it  that  perpetual  miracle  of 
the  divine  love  which  turns  moral  failure  itself  into  a  new 
possibility  of  moral  victory. 

Man's  fall,  in  this  sense,  was  not  a  defeat  for  God's 
plans.  It  was  the  occasion  of  a  new  and  more  glorious 
evolution  of  them ;  and  through  Christ's  redemption  man 
is  enriched  by  the  Fall.  Southey  summarises  Wesley's 
teaching  on  this  point  very  happily : — 

"  If  man  had  not  fallen  there  must  have  been  a  blank  in  our 
faith  and  in  our  love.  There  could  have  been  no  such  thing  as 
faith  in  God  '  so  loving  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  Son  for 
us  men  and  for  our  salvation ' ;  no  faith  in  the  Son  of  God,  as 
loving  us.  and  giving  Himself  for  us ;  no  faith  in  the  Spirit  of 
God,  as  renewing  the  image  of  God  in  our  hearts,  or  raising  us 
from  the  death  of  sin  unto  the  life  of  righteousness.  And  the  same 
blank  must  likewise  have  been  in  our  love.  We  could  not  have 
loved  the  Father  under  the  nearest  and  dearest  relation,  as 
delivering  up  His  Son  for  us ;  we  could  not  have  loved  the  Son, 
as  bearing  our  sins  in  His  own  body  on  the  tree ;  we  could  not 
have  loved  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  revealing  to  us  the  Father  and  the 
Son,  as  opening  the  eyes  of  our  understandings,  bringing  us  out  of 
darkness  into  His  marvellous  light,  renewing  the  image  of  God  in 
our  soul,  and  sealing  us  unto  the  day  of  redemption." x 

On  the  atoning  work  of  Jesus  Christ,  with  its  mysteries 
deep  beyond  all  sounding  and  high  above  all  vision, 
Wesley  dwelt  with  constant  emphasis,  but  always  in  the 
language  of  scripture.  "  Christ  died  for  our  offences  and 
rose  again  for  our  justification."  "  We  have  redemption  in 
His  blood,  even  the  forgiveness  of  sins."  And  the  condi- 
tion upon  which  all  the  measureless  grace  of  that  atone- 
ment becomes  effective  in  human  experience  is  simply 
faith.  But  faith,  as  Wesley  understood  it,  is  not  some 
mood  of  intellectual  assent ;  it  is  not  a  mere  set  of 
opinions.  "A  string  of  opinions,"  he  said,  "is  no  more 

1  Southey,  ii.  p.  53. 


THE    EFFECTIVE   DOCTRINES   OF   METHODISM      427 

Christian  faith  than  a  string  of  beads  is  Christian  holi- 
ness." His  description  of  faith  has  in  it  a  certain  glow  of 
imagination  not  common  in  his  writings. 

"Faith  is  a  power  wrought  by  the  Almighty  in  an  immortal 
spirit  inhabiting  a  house  of  clay,  to  see  through  that  veil  into  the 
world  of  spirits,  into  things  invisible  and  eternal.  ...  It  is  the 
eye  of  the  new-born  soul,  whereby  every  true  believer  '  seeth  Him 
who  is  invisible.'  It  is  the  ear  of  the  soul,  whereby  the  sinner 
'  hears  the  voice  of  the  Son  of  God  and  lives ' ;  the  palate  of 
the  soul  (if  the  expression  may  be  allowed)  whereby  a  believer 
'tastes  the  good  Word  of  God  and  the  powers  of  the  world  to 
come';  the  feeling  of  the  soul  whereby  'through  the  power  of 
the  Highest  overshadowing  him '  he  perceives  the  Presence  of  Him 
in  whom  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being,  and  feels  the  love 
of  God  shed  abroad  in  his  heart.  It  is  the  internal  evidence  of 
Christianity,  a  perpetual  revelation,  equally  strong,  equally  new, 
through  all  the  centuries  which  have  elapsed  since  the  Incarna- 
tion, and  passing  now,  even  as  it  has  done  from  the  beginning, 
directly  from  God  into  the  believing  soul.  '  It  is  nigh  thee,  in 
thy  mouth,  and  in  thy  heart,  if  thou  believest  in  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.' "  i 

This  definition  of  faith  pleased  an  intellect  at  once  so 
philosophical  and  so  critical  as  that  of  Coleridge.  "  I  ven- 
ture," he  said,  "  to  avow  it  as  my  conviction  that  either 
Christian  faith  is  what  Wesley  here  describes,  or  there  is 
no  meaning  in  the  word." 

But  this  faith  itself,  Wesley  held,  is  wrought  by  grace, 
and  so  is  the  gift  of  God. 

"  Can  you  give  yourself  this  faith  1  (asks  Wesley).  Is  it  in 
your  power  to  see,  or  hear,  or  taste,  or  feel  God  ;  to  raise  in 
yourself  any  perception  of  God,  or  of  an  invisible  world ;  to  open 
an  intercourse  between  yourself  and  the  world  of  spirits;  to 
discern  either  them  or  Him  that  created  them ;  to  burst  the 
veil  that  is  on  your  heart,  and  let  in  the  light  of  eternity?  You 
know  it  is  not.  You  not  only  do  not,  but  cannot  (by  your  own 
strength),  thus  believe.  The  more  you  labour  so  to  do  the  more 
you  will  be  convinced  it  is  the  gift  of  God.  His  pardoning 
mercy  supposes  nothing  in  us  but  a  sense  of  mere  sin  and  misery ; 
and  to  all  who  see  and  feel  and  own  their  wants,  and  their 
utter  inability  to  remove  them,  God  freely  gives  faith,  for  the 
sake  of  Him  '  in  whom  He  is  always  well  pleased.' " 

1  Stevens,  p.  331. 


428  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

The  fruits  of  faith  Wesley  held  to  be  two  great  concur- 
rent changes.  One  is  a  change  of  nature  in  the  believing 
soul  itself — the  great  spiritual  miracle  of  regeneration ;  the 
other  is  a  change  of  relation  to  the  divine  law,  known  as 
justification,  justification  being  the  new  standing  in  the 
moral  universe  the  act  of  forgiveness  creates.  Attending 
these  great  changes,  their  witness  and  seal,  is  the  grace 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  attesting  their  existence  to  the  soul 
itself,  and  registering  it  in  the  consciousness  by  an  endow- 
ment of  divine  peace. 

The  doctrine  of  "  assurance  "  through  the  witness  of  the 
Spirit  is  an  integral  part  of  religion.  Scripture  teaches 
it ;  reason  demands  it ;  the  creeds  of  all  the  Christian 
Churches  assert  it.  It  is  incredible  that  when  God's  love 
in  Christ  has  established  its  empire  in  the  believing  heart, 
and  sin  is  forgiven,  and  all  the  ties  of  the  spiritual  order 
are  restored,  that  this  stupendous  change  should  be  un- 
realised. It  is  incredible  that  God  should  conceal  His 
grace ;  that  it  can  be  His  will  that  His  pardoned  child 
should  live  under  the  shadow  of  a  lie. 

But  this  gracious  truth  was,  in  Wesley's  day,  one  of  the 
lost  doctrines  of  Christianity.  It  was  in  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles,  but  it  had  faded  out  of  human  memory.  It  was 
no  longer  realised,  nor  even  expected,  in  human  experi- 
ence. It  had  become  a  mere  incredibility.  Its  rediscovery 
and  reassertion  are  part  of  the  great  service  Methodism 
has  rendered  to  the  general  Christian  faith.  This  is  what 
Wesley  says  of  it : — 

"  I  observed,  many  years  ago,  that  it  is  hard  to  find  words  in  the 
language  of  men  to  explain  the  deep  things  of  God.  Indeed,  there 
are  none  that  will  adequately  express  what  the  Spirit  of  God  works 
in  His  children.  But  perhaps  one  might  say  (desiring  any  who  are 
taught  of  God  to  correct,  soften,  or  strengthen  the  expression),  by 
the  '  testimony  of  the  Spirit '  I  mean  an  inward  impression  on 
the  soul,  whereby  the  Spirit  of  God  immediately  and  directly 
witnesses  to  my  spirit  that  I  am  a  child  of  God  ;  that  '  Jesus 
Christ  hath  loved  me,  and  given  Himself  for  me/  that  all  my 
sins  are  blotted  out,  and  I,  even  I,  am  reconciled  to  God.  After 
twenty  years'  further  consideration,  I  see  no  cause  to  retract  any 
part  of  this.  Neither  do  I  conceive  how  any  of  these  expressions 
may  be  altered  so  as  to  make  them  more  intelligible.  Meantime, 
let  it  be  observed,  I  do  not  mean  hereby  that  the  Spirit  of  God 


THE   EFFECTIVE    DOCTRINES   OF   METHODISM      429 

testifies  this  by  any  outward  voice  ;  no,  nor  always  by  an  inward 
voice,  although  He  may  do  this  sometimes.  Neither  do  I  suppose 
that  He  always  applies  to  the  heart  (though  He  often  may)  one  or 
more  texts  of  Scripture.  But  He  so  works  upon  the  soul  by  His 
immediate  influence,  and  by  a  strong,  though  inexplicable  operation, 
that  the  stormy  wind  and  troubled  waves  subside,  and  there  is  a 
sweet  calm  ;  the  heart  resting  as  in  the  arms  of  Jesus,  and  the 
sinner  being  clearly  satisfied  that  all  his  'iniquities  are  forgiven, 
and  his  sins  covered.'  " 

Another  characteristic  doctrine  of  Methodism  is  that 
which  bears  the  highly  controversial  title  of  "  perfection." 
Wesley  did  not  like  that  word,  and  seldom  uses  it,  but  in 
the  doctrine  for  which  it  stands  he  believed  profoundly. 

Its  proclamation,  he  held,  was  part  of  the  mission  of 
Methodism,  and  constitutes  the  secret  of  its  success. 
Wherever  its  witness  to  the  doctrine  failed,  there  followed 
an  instant  arrest  of  all  growth.  But  Wesley's  statement 
of  the  doctrine  is  marked  by  a  wise  sobriety.  He  believed 
in  no  angelic  perfection ;  in  no  "  perfection,"  indeed,  of  any 
sort  which  lifted  its  possessor  out  of  the  reach  of  the 
limitations  and  infirmities  which  are  the  inevitable  con- 
ditions under  which  men  live.  He  was  accustomed  to 
define  the  doctrine  in  the  language  of  Scripture:  it  is 
simply  "  loving  God  with  all  the  heart  and  soul  and  mind 
and  strength."  Wesley  believed  in  this  doctrine  because 
the  denial  of  it  meant  the  assertion  that  God's  ideals  for 
human  character  must  for  ever  remain  unattained,  and 
Christ's  redemption  itself  must  suffer  defeat,  even  in  those 
who  accept  it.  But  Wesley  always  linked  the  doctrine  to 
conduct,  and  insisted  that  it  should  be  tried  by  its  effect 
on  the  conduct,  and  he  sobered  with  tireless  diligence  and 
quenchless  good  sense  the  extravagant  statements  of 
some  of  his  followers. 

Perfect  Christians  "  are  not,"  he  says,  "  free  from  ignorance,  no, 
nor  from  mistake.  We  are  no  more  to  expect  any  man  to  be 
infallible  than  to  be  omniscient.  From  infirmities  none  are  per- 
fectly freed  till  their  spirits  return  to  God ;  neither  can  we  expect, 
till  then,  to  be  wholly  freed  from  temptation  ;  for  '  the  servant 
is  not  above  his  Master.'  But  neither  in  this  sense  is  there  any 
absolute  perfection  on  earth.  There  is  no  perfection  of  degrees, 
none  which  does  not  admit  of  a  continual  increase." 


430  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Sanctification,  he  thus  taught,  was  the  growth  of  the 
regenerated  character  into  maturity  and  completeness; 
and  the  measure  of  that  growth  is  determined  by  the 
faith  and  expectancy  of  its  subject.  So,  while  in  ordinary 
cases  it  is  a  gradual  process,  in  a  sense,  and  under  certain 
conditions,  it  might  be  instantaneous,  though  no  stage 
can  ever  be  reached  which  forbids  further  increase.  And 
Wesley  was  never  mightier  as  a  preacher  than  when 
urging  the  instant  acceptance  of  his  doctrine.  Here 
is  an  example  of  the  appeals  he  was  accustomed  to 
make : — 

"Thou,  therefore,  look  for  it  every  moment.  Why  not  this 
hour?  this  moment?  Certainly  you  may  look  for  it  now,  if 
you  believe  it  is  by  faith.  And  by  this  token  you  may  surely 
know  whether  you  seek  it  by  faith  or  works.  If  by  works, 
you  want  something  to  be  done  first,  before  you  are  sanctified. 
You  think  I  must  first  be,  or  do,  thus  or  thus.  Then,  you  are 
seeking  it  by  works  unto  this  day.  If  you  seek  it  by  faith,  expect 
it  as  you  are,  and  expect  it  now.  To  deny  one  of  them  is  to 
deny  them  all ;  to  allow  one  is  to  allow  them  all.  Do  you  believe 
we  are  sanctified  by  faith  ?  Be  true,  then,  to  your  principle,  and 
look  for  this  blessing  just  as  you  are,  neither  better  nor  worse ;  as 
a  poor  sinner  that  has  nothing  to  pay,  nothing  to  plead,  but 
'Christ  died.'  And  if  you  look  for  it  as  you  are,  then  expect 
it  now.  Stay  for  nothing !  Why  should  you  ?  Christ  is  ready, 
and  He  is  all  you  want.  He  is  waiting  for  you !  He  is  at  the 
door." 

There  is  no  need  to  dwell  further  on  Wesley's  theology. 
It  is  to  be  seen,  to-day,  under  every  sky,  crystallised 
into  a  great  Church  system — one  of  the  most  energetic 
and  influential  forms  of  Protestant  Christianity  the  world 
knows.  And  no  one  who  studies  with  a  dispassionate 
mind  Wesley's  theology  can  fail  to  see  that  it  is  a  system 
which  puts  in  true  and  striking  perspective  all  the  great 
doctrines  of  evangelical  Christianity.  It  is  a  creed  of 
hope  for  defeated  and  fallen  men;  a  statement  of  truth 
which  exactly  suits  the  missionary  and  the  evangelist. 
And  yet  in  its  symmetry,  its  reasonableness,  its  agreement 
with  Scripture,  and  the  verification  it  finds  in  human 
consciousness,  it  is  a  creed  to  satisfy  the  philosopher. 
And  the  explanation  of  it  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  in- 
tensely and  supremely  evangelical.  It  presents  religion 


THE   EFFECTIVE    DOCTRINES    OF    METHODISM      431 

not  as  a  scheme  of  ethics  merely,  but  as  a  divine  deliver- 
ance. And  the  ethics  do  not  precede  the  deliverance  and 
earn  it ;  they  follow  it  and  are  created  by  it. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  secret  of  that  curious  doctrinal 
peace  which  marks  the  history  of  Methodism  lies  exactly 
at  this  point.  The  enduring  controversies  which  have 
torn  asunder  the  Christian  Church  lie  in  what  may  be 
called  the  realm  of  metaphysical  theology.  The  mere 
recital  of  the  great  historic  heresies  will  show  this.  And 
the  working  theology  of  Methodism,  since  it  is  supremely 
occupied  with  a  great  cluster  of  evangelical  doctrines,  has 
escaped  these  controversies. 

But  if  Methodism  is  always  supremely  evangelical  in 
its  teaching,  it  is  also  intensely  practical,  and  wisely  sober. 
Its  note  is  a  certain  equipoise  and  sanity ;  an  abhorrence 
of  exaggeration.  Its  theology  keeps  its  feet  on  the  solid 
earth.  Its  creed  is  always  related  to  conduct ;  is  valued 
as  it  produces  conduct ;  is  tried  by  its  effect  on  conduct. 

Through  the  whole  of  Wesley's  theology  runs  this 
characteristic  note  of  equipoise  betwixt  ill-balanced  ex- 
tremes. The  one  great  doctrinal  controversy  of  Wesley's 
life,  for  example,  related  to  Calvinism.  It  is  undeniable 
that  in  salvation  there  are  two  factors,  the  Divine  will  and 
man's  will.  Religion  consists  in  their  harmony;  heaven 
must  be  found  in  their  eternal  union.  When  the  human 
will  keeps  time,  time,  time  in  a  golden  eternal  music,  with 
the  Divine  will,  so  that  the  soul  loves  what  God  loves,  and 
hates  what  God  hates,  then  all  God's  ideals  about  man  are 
realised.  Now,  Calvinism,  as  Whitefield  at  least  held  it, 
lost  sight  of  that  strange,  perilous,  yet  most  sublime  thing 
in  man — the  root  of  all  morality,  and  without  which  moral 
choice  is  impossible — a  free,  self-determining  will.  It  put 
so  much  emphasis  on  the  Divine  will,  that  the  human  will 
disappeared.  But  Wesley  saw  both  factors.  He  taught 
his  Church  to  see  and  affirm  both.  And  his  Arminianism, 
while  it  affirms  the  dignity  and  freedom  of  man's  will, 
gives  its  just  place  to  God's  will  in  all  the  processes  of 
salvation. 

Or  take  again  that  doctrine  of  "  perfection "  which  has 
often  been  the  reproach  of  Methodism,  and  is  certainly  its 
characteristic.  The  question  here  is,  What  is  the  ulti- 
mate ideal  of  religion ;  the  ideal  capable  of  being  realised 


432  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

in  human  experience  ?  There  are  two  opposite  schools 
of  thought — the  moralist  on  one  side,  who  conceives 
religion  as  the  perfection  of  outward  conduct;  and  the 
mystic  on  the  other  side,  who  separates  religion  from 
conduct,  or  resolves  it  into  a  sort  of  Hindoo  ecstasy. 
Wesley  held  a  mid  course  betwixt  these  two  extremes. 
As  against  the  moralist,  he  held  that  religion  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  scheme  of  mechanical  ethics.  It  is 
something  more  than  even  "  morality  touched  with  emo- 
tion." It  is  a  Divine  deliverance  !  It  is  the  entrance  of 
supernatural  forces  into  human  character ;  a  miracle  of 
grace  that  lifts  the  human  soul  again  to  that  place  in 
the  spiritual  order  from  which  sin  has  cast  it. 

But  Wesley  shunned  the  opposite  extreme.  He  had  a 
wise  and  profound  dread  of  quietism.  He  defined  perfec- 
tion always,  and  with  restrained  sobriety,  in  the  actual 
words  of  Scripture.  It  is  simply  "loving  God  with  all 
the  heart  and  soul  and  mind  and  strength."  And  he 
rigorously  tested  the  doctrine  in  those  who  claimed  to 
have  realised  it  by  its  effect  on  the  conduct. 

In  things  ceremonial,  again,  Wesley,  in  exactly  the 
same  way,  shunned  the  falsehood  of  extremes.  His 
teaching  as  to  baptism  may  be  taken  as  an  example  of 
this  wise  sobriety.  There  are  three  known  modes  of 
administering  the  rite  of  baptism,  and  over- emphasis 
on  any  one  of  them  is  the  water-mark  of  the  ritualist. 
And  evangelicalism,  it  may  be  added,  has  its  ritualists,  as 
rigid  in  form,  and  not  seldom  as  acrid  in  temper,  as  sacer- 
dotalism itself.  Wesley  made  no  choice  betwixt  these 
rival  modes.  He  held,  and  taught  his  Church  to  hold, 
the  wise  doctrine  that  all  three  modes  are  legitimate,  and 
no  one  of  them  is  imperative. 

Methodism  has  produced  two  great  theologians,  Richard 
Watson  and  William  Burt  Pope.  In  many  respects  they 
are  utterly  unlike  each  other.  Watson  is  inferior  to 
Pope  in  scholarship  and  literary  gifts.  He  knew  little, 
for  example,  of  the  relation  of  human  creeds  to  each 
other.  The  science  of  comparative  theology  was  not  yet 
born  when  Watson  wrote.  Yet,  what  sensible  Methodist 
would  not  be  willing  to  have  the  creed  of  his  Church 
judged  by  Watson's  nne  and  luminous  definitions  ? 

Pope,  on  the  other  hand,  had  the  garnered  knowledge 


THE   EFFECTIVE   DOCTRINES   OF    METHODISM      433 

of  a  great  scholar,  with  a  strain  of  philosophical  genius 
added,  rare  amongst  theologians;  and  he  keeps  always 
in  clear  vision  what  may  be  called  the  inter-relations 
of  human  belief.  But  both  writers  have  the  character- 
istic note  of  Methodism;  its  wise  sobriety;  its  intense 
evangelicalism,  which  yet  shuns  the  characteristic  perils 
of  evangelicalism.  It  is  a  theology  which  links  doctrine 
to  conduct.  It  abhors  fanaticism.  It  has  the  salt  of 
reality.  Here  are  doctrines  realised  in  human  experi- 
ence and  tested  by  that  experience. 

Methodism,  as  we  have  seen,  puts  a  mood  of  the  con- 
science, and  not  any  doctrinal  belief,  as  a  condition  of 
membership.  But  every  Church  must  have  a  doctrinal 
test  for  its  teachers,  and  the  doctrinal  tests  of  the 
Methodist  ministry  are  characteristic.  They  consist  of: 
(i)  Wesley's  Notes  on  the  New  Testament;  (2)  his  Fifty- 
three  Sermons.  No  other  Church  has  doctrinal  tests  of 
this  type ;  yet  they  unconsciously,  but  most  happily, 
reflect  the  peculiar  genius  of  Methodism.  Its  theology 
is  rooted  directly  in  Scripture.  The  Bible,  as  a  standard 
of  doctrine,  is  assessed  in  very  unlike  terms  by  different 
Churches.  Romanism  puts  the  Church  above  the  Bible. 
The  Church,  it  claims,  is  older  than  the  Bible  and  greater. 
She  is  its  guardian  and  interpreter.  What  the  Bible 
means  is  only  made  articulate  to  human  ears,  and  autho- 
ritative for  the  human  conscience,  by  the  voice  of  the 
Church.  It  is  a  dead  book :  she  is  a  living  entity.  The 
sacerdotalist  puts  tradition  beside  the  Bible  as  of  equal 
authority. 

Now  Methodism  is  committed  to  no  special  theory 
as  to  the  inspiration  of  Scripture;  but  it  accepts  the 
Bible  as  the  one  source  of  divine  knowledge  and  the 
supreme  test  of  all  theology.  Wesley,  in  a  memorable 
passage,  explains  why  he  is  homo  unius  libri,  and 
the  passage  expresses  the  whole  attitude  of  his  Church 
towards  the  Bible : — 

"  I  am  a  creature  of  a  day,  passing  through  life  as  an  arrow 
through  the  air.  I  am  a  spirit  come  from  God,  and  returning  to 
God.  Just  hovering  over  the  great  gulf  till,  a  few  mo'ments 
hence,  I  am  no  more  seen ;  I  drop  into  an  unchangeable  eternity  ! 
I  want  to  know  one  thing — the  way  to  heaven ;  how  to  land  safe 
on  that  happy  shore.  God  Himself  has  condescended  to  teach 

2  F. 


434  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

the  way ;  for  this  very  end  He  came  from  heaven.  He  hath 
written  it  down  in  a  Book.  Oh  give  me  that  Book !  At  any 
price,  give  me  the  Book  of  God  !  I  have  it.  Here  is  knowledge 
enough  for  me.  Let  me  be  homo  unius  libri.  Here,  then,  I  am, 
far  from  the  busy  ways  of  men.  I  sit  down  alone.  Only  God  is 
here.  In  His  presence  I  open,  I  read  His  Book ;  for  this  end,  to 
find  the  way  to  heaven.  Is  there  a  doubt  concerning  the  meaning 
of  what  I  read?  Does  anything  appear  dark  and  intricate?  I 
lift  up  my  heart  to  the  Father  of  Lights  :  '  Lord,  is  it  not  Thy 
word,  "If  any  man  lack  wisdom,  let  him  ask  of  God"?  Thou 
'  givest  liberally,  and  upbraidest  not.'  Thou  hast  said,  '  If  any 
be  willing  to  do  Thy  will,  he  shall  know.'  I  am  willing  to 
do ;  let  me  know  Thy  will.'  I,  then,  search  after  and  consider 
parallel  passages  of  Scripture,  '  comparing  spiritual  things  with 
spiritual.'  I  meditate  thereon  with  all  the  attention  and  earnest- 
ness of  which  my  mind  is  capable.  If  any  doubt  still  remains, 
I  consult  those  who  are  experienced  in  the  things  of  God ;  and 
then  the  writings  whereby,  being  dead,  they  yet  speak.  And 
what  I  thus  learn,  that  I  teach." 

Wesley's  "Notes  on  the  New  Testament"  is  not, 
perhaps,  a  book  for  scholars ;  it  is  more  fitted  for  hours 
of  devotion  than  for  study.  It  does  not  shine  with 
ingenious  subtleties  of  exposition,  and  it  has  no  pre- 
tence to  original  research.  It  was  written  before  the 
Higher  Criticism  was  born,  and  written  at  high  pressure, 
during  a  brief  interval,  when  Wesley  was  resting  on 
account  of  sickness.  But  it  has  a  certain  flavour  of 
masculine  sense  and  healthy-minded  reality  which 
makes  it  a  very  nourishing  bit  of  expository  literature. 
Its  spirit  reflects  the  reverence,  the  simplicity  of  faith, 
the  solemn  and  almost  passionate  earnestness  of  the 
fine  sentences  about  the  Bible  we  have  quoted.  And 
that  this  book  is  one  of  the  two  doctrinal  tests  by 
which  Methodism  under  all  skies  judges  its  ministry, 
shows  what  is  its  attitude  towards  the  Word  of  God. 

The  second  of  the  doctrinal  tests  of  Methodism,  the 
Fifty-three  Sermons,  is  also  happily  characteristic.  Here 
we  have  truth,  not  drawn  out  into  metaphysical  defini- 
tions and  addressed  to  the  intellect,  but  translated  into 
practical  terms.  It  is  truth  as  it  appeals  to  the  con- 
science and  affects  conduct ;  truth  clothed  in  forms 
intended  to  instantly  influence  conduct. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

METHODISM   AS   A   POLITY 

UNDERLYING  the  polity  as  well  as  the  theology  of  Meth- 
odism is  a  real  but  sometimes  forgotten  philosophy. 
Looked  at  as  a  history,  Methodism  is  an  evolution,  in 
which  each  step  is  an  inevitable  stage  in  a  vital  process. 
Regarded  as  a  system,  it  is  a  living  organism,  in  which 
each  part  is  the  necessary  complement  of  every  other 
part. 

Wesley  himself  explains  what  may  be  called  the 
philosophy  of  Methodist  history  by  saying  that  "every- 
thing arose  just  as  the  occasion  required."  In  those 
quiet  syllables  is  expressed  what,  as  we  look  back  upon 
it,  is  seen  to  be  one  of  the  clearest  processes  of  scientific 
evolution  known  to  ecclesiastical  history.  Who  studies 
that  evolution  will  see  that,  always,  the  facts  not  only 
create  the  machinery,  they  make  it  inevitable.  And  any 
failure  to  meet  the  new  facts  as  they  arose  with  adequate 
organisation  would  have  arrested,  and  perhaps  have  de- 
feated, the  whole  movement.  The  story  of  Methodism 
is  a  drama  in  which  no  human  being,  not  even  Wesley 
himself,  is  consciously  shaping  events.  The  shaping  force 
is  greater  than  any  human  will,  and  wiser  than  any 
human  sagacity.  And  not  merely  does  the  scale  of  the 
events  outrun  the  vision  of  the  chief  actors  in  them,  the 
order  of  those  events  seems  to  be  independent  of  their 
purpose. 

Let  Wesley's  life,  after  his  conversion,  be  set  in 
historic  perspective.  He  had  a  new  message  for  England. 
He  taught,  it  is  true,  the  "plain  old  doctrines  of  the 
Church  of  England,"  but  he  proclaimed  them  with  a 
change  of  emphasis,  and  with  a  note  of  reality  and  of 
urgency,  which  startled  the  drowsy  clergy  of  that  day. 
He  talked  what  sounded  in  their  ears  an  unknown  and 
disquieting  language.  He  becomes  for  them  a  challenge 

435 


436  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

and  a  test.  As  a  result  the  church  doors  are  shut  against 
him.  He  must  be  silent,  or  find  a  new  arena  and  new 
audiences.  So  came  field-preaching,  and  Wesley  and  his 
comrades  proclaimed  their  message  to  vast  crowds  under 
the  arched  skies  and  in  the  free  air.  With  that  fact  a 
new  ecclesiastical  world  comes  into  existence. 

The  fast  multiplying  converts  soon  make  imperative 
an  organisation  for  their  oversight  and  nurture.  Wesley 
takes  a  bit  of  machinery  already  in  existence,  and  groups 
his  converts  into  societies.  The  societies  must  have 
meeting-places.  These  at  first  are  rooms  ;  the  rooms  grow 
into  chapels.  All  this  means  the  raising  and  expending 
of  mucn  money.  Then,  as  now,  Methodism  found  the 
strength  of  its  finances,  not  in  the  splendid  gifts  of  the 
rich,  but  in  the  ungrudged  if  scanty  gifts  of  the  poor; 
and  there  must  be  some  organisation  for  collecting  their 
pence. 

The  story  is  classic  how,  out  of  this  financial  necessity, 
rose  the  greatest  institution  in  Methodism — the  class- 
meeting,  and  its  most  valued  order  of  workers — the  class- 
leaders.  Wesley,  quick-eyed  to  see  the  possibilities  of 
things,  writes  in  his  Journal,  "  This  was  the  very  thing  we 
wanted."  He  put  his  converts  in  groups  under  leaders, 
who  at  first  visited  the  members  in  their  charge  at  their 
own  houses.  Later,  and  for  greater  convenience,  the  groups 
gathered  in  little  meetings.  So  arose  the  Methodist 
class-meeting ;  and  with  it  came  into  existence  what  the 
class-meeting  represents — the  lay  pastorate  of  Methodism 
— its  "  leaders." 

Already,  too,  the  great  twin  feature  of  Methodism,  an 
order  of  lay  preachers,  had  been  created  by  the  necessities 
of  the  work.  Wesley  and  his  comrades  must  have  helpers, 
who  sometimes  shared  their  travels,  but  more  frequently 
remained  behind  to  take  charge  of  the  converts  while  the 
leaders  moved  on  to  new  fields.  These  "  helpers  "  at  first 
were  allowed  only  to  expound  the  Scripture ;  but  it  passes 
human  wit  to  tell  where  "  exposition  "  ceases  and  "  preach- 
ing" begins.  The  "helpers "  inevitably  became  preachers ; 
and,  like  their  great  leader,  they  were  itinerants.  And 
the  itinerancy  profoundly  colours  the  whole  Methodist 
ministry.  Its  ministers  are  more  than  an  order.  They 
are  a  brotherhood — a  brotherhood  with  something  of  a 


METHODISM    AS    A   POLITY  437 

pilgrim  and  militant  note  in  it.  How  deeply  the  law  of 
celibacy  affects  the  Romish  priesthood  every  one  knows ; 
and  the  law  of  the  itinerancy  affects  the  ministry  of  the 
Methodist  Church  almost  as  powerfully.  And  the  other 
two  great  characteristics  of  the  Methodist  Church,  the 
lay  ministry  and  the  lay  pastorate,  are  the  correlatives  of 
the  itinerancy.  Without  an  itinerant  ministry  they  would 
not  be  needed  ;  without  them  an  itinerant  ministry  would 
not  be  possible. 

The  societies  were  presently  grouped  for  purpose  of 
oversight  and  government  into  clusters  called  circuits. 
Each  branch  of  Methodism  had  already  evolved  its  special 
officers.  The  classes  required  leaders,  and  the  leaders 
naturally  crystallised  into  the  leaders'  meeting,  the 
spiritual  court  which  watches  over  the  discipline  of  the 
membership.  The  chapels  were  vested  in  trustees;  so 
came  the  Trustee  meetings — the  business  machinery 
dealing  with  church  property.  The  societies  needed 
stewards  to  take  charge  of  their  finances.  A  combination 
of  all  the  stewards,  leaders,  &c.,  in  the  bounds  of  any 
circuit  formed  the  Quarterly  meeting,  perhaps  the  most 
effective  instrument  for  the  transaction  of  the  business 
affairs  of  a  group  of  churches  yet  discovered. 

The  multiplying  circuits  scattered  over  the  area  of  the 
three  kingdoms  needed  some  central  organisation,  and 
this  was  found  in  the  Conference.  Wesley's  first  Con- 
ference in  1744  consisted  merely,  as  we  have  seen,  of  six 
clergymen,  who  invited  four  lay  helpers  to  join  them ;  and 
these  consulted  together  as  to  the  teaching  and  policy  of 
the  new  movement.  For  forty  years  the  Conference  was 
an  indeterminate,  fluctuating  body,  dependent  on  Wesley's 
will,  and  meeting  only  on  his  summons.  But,  as  was 
inevitable,  it  grew  in  scale  and  influence;  it  became 
definite  in  structure.  It  formed  in  the  end  the  centre 
of  authority  for  the  whole  movement  of  which  Wesley 
was  the  head.  It  defined  the  theology  of  Methodism, 
shaped  its  organisation,  directed  its  policy,  enforced  its 
discipline. 

Such  a  court,  it  was  soon  realised,  must  not  depend  on 
the  accident  of  Wesley's  life,  and  expire  with  his  death. 
It  must  be  assured  of  continued  legal  existence.  So  in 
due  course  came  the  famous  Deed  of  Declaration,  and 


438  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Methodism  became  what,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  is  a 
perpetual  corporation;  but  what  is,  in  historic  fact,  an 
undying  Church. 

Meanwhile,  and  still  as  in  all  other  details  of  its  history 
— by  the  mere  compulsion  of  events — another  great 
question,  the  administration  of  the  sacraments,  had  to 
be  settled.  That  question  marks  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
It  compelled  Wesley  to  take,  though  late  and  reluctantly, 
the  steps  which  completed  the  equipment  of  Methodism. 
He  broke  through  the  church  order  which  so  long  fettered 
his  hands.  He  first  permitted  the  celebration  of  the 
sacrament  in  unconsecrated  buildings.  And  it  was 
Charles  Wesley,  the  most  obstinate  of  High  Churchmen, 
who  led  the  way  in  administering  the  Lord's  Supper  in 
unconsecrated  places;  and  with  a  flash  of  what  was  in 
him  unusual,  common-sense,  he  declared  he  would  ad- 
minister the  ordinance,  not  only  in  an  unconsecrated 
house,  but  in  the  midst  of  a  wood,  rather  than  leave  the 
new  converts  without  the  means  of  obeying  Christ's 
command.  Later,  Wesley  himself  ordained  some  of  his 
helpers  for  the  purpose  of  administering  the  sacraments ; 
but  he  did  this  only  when  the  failure  of  his  helpers 
amongst  the  Anglican  clergy  made  this  necessary;  and 
he  did  it  in  each  field,  in  turn,  as  the  necessity  became 
urgent — first  in  America,  then  in  Scotland,  then  in  Ireland 
and  the  West  Indies,  last  of  all  in  England. 

Who  can  look  back  on  this  whole  process  without 
seeing  that  it  is  an  evolution,  orderly,  inevitable,  scientific ; 
the  growth  of  a  living  organism  with  all  its  parts  in  vital 
and  necessary  relation  to  each  other?  For  life  has  no 
superfluities. 

If  the  ecclesiastical  form  of  Methodism,  as  it  actually 
exists  full  grown,  be  considered,  one  great  and  charac- 
teristic feature  at  once  becomes  visible.  It  represents  a 
curiously  complete  and  wise  equipoise  of  forces.  The 
constant  peril  of  all  church  systems  lies  at  the  opposite 
extremes  of  clerical  despotism,  and  of  an  unregulated  lay 
democracy.  The  Church  of  Rome,  with  its  priestly  rule, 
its  exaggeration  of  ministerial  authority,  represents  one 
extreme.  Plymouth  Brethrenism,  which  practically  denies 
the  existence  of  any  ministerial  office  at  all,  represents  the 
other  extreme. 


METHODISM    AS    A    POLITY  439 

Now,  Methodism  might  easily  have  become  a  despotism. 
Its  history,  indeed,  seemed  to  almost  make  that  inevitable. 
Wesley  might  have  played  the  part  of  another  Ignatius 
Loyola  to  his  societies,  and  have  set  up  in  them,  and  over 
them,  an  autocracy  as  absolute  as  that  which  is  crystallised 
into  tyranny  in  the  Order  of  Jesus.  If  Wesley  had  been 
as  Southey,  contemplating  him  through  a  distorted 
medium,  imagined  him  to  be,  consumed  with  a  love  of 
power,  he  might  have  made  himself  a  despot  with  ampler 
justification  for  his  despotism  than  most  other  historical 
characters  possess.  History,  indeed — to  say  nothing  of 
human  nature — was  on  the  side  of  that  probability.  But 
the  grace  of  God  saved  Wesley  from  the  blunder,  and 
Wesley's  Church  from  the  disaster,  of  a  despotism. 
Methodism  is  neither  a  despotism  nor  a  democracy.  It 
does  not  exaggerate  the  claims  of  the  ministerial  office; 
but  it  does  not  forget  that  such  an  office  exists.  Its 
system,  we  repeat,  though  it  is  not  always  and  sufficiently 
recognised,  is  that  of  a  wise  balance  of  forces. 

Wesley  has  been  described  as  the  discoverer  of  the 
possibilities  of  the  layman  in  the  modern  Church,  and  it 
is  certain  that  no  other  Church  draws  its  laymen  into 
franker  partnership  in  all  its  affairs  than  does  the  Church 
Wesley  founded.  It  shares  its  pastoral  office  with  the 
leaders,  its  preaching  office  with  the  local  preachers.  In 
all  its  church  courts,  from  the  Quarterly  meeting  to  the 
Conference,  where  the  business  affairs  01  the  Church  are 
dealt  with,  laymen  sit  with  ministers  in  equal  numbers, 
and  with  equal,  if  not  identical,  powers.  Yet  Methodism 
is  no  more  a  lay  democracy  than  it  is  a  clerical  despotism. 
Through  all  its  courts,  and  in  all  its  work,  there  is  an 
almost  unconscious  balance  maintained  betwixt  these  two 
extremes. 

The  minister  alone,  for  example,  has  the  right  to  admit 
members  into  the  Church;  but  the  leaders'  meeting,  a 
lay  court,  has  the  right  of  veto  on  that  admission.  All 
the  lay  officers  in  the  Church  are  elective ;  but  the  min- 
ister nominates  candidates  for  election.  He  nominates 
a  leader,  but  the  Leaders'  meeting  elects.  He  nominates 
a  steward,  but  the  Quarterly  meeting  must  elect.  He 
nominates  a  candidate  for  the  ministry  :  but  his  nomina- 
tion is  only  a  proposal ;  it  must  be  sustained  by  the  votes 


440  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

of  the  Quarterly  meeting.  And  so  a  lay  court  keeps  the 
key  of  the  pulpit.  Speaking  generally,  no  officer  can  be 
appointed  without  the  consent  of  the  Church  court ;  but 
the  Church  court  does  not  elect  without  the  nomination 
of  the  minister. 

It  is  not  a  question  of  "  orders,"  but  of  order.  The 
minister's  nomination  is  a  primd  facie  guarantee  of  fitness 
in  the  candidate ;  it  is  a  guard  against  the  rise  of  parties, 
the  rush  of  unfit,  if  not  self-proposed,  candidates,  the  arts 
and  the  passions  of  contested  elections.  There  is  no 
direct  and  independent  election  to  any  office  by,  say,  the 

S3neral  body  of  church  members ;  for  this  would  turn  the 
hurch  into  a  democracy,  with  the  characteristic  risks  of 
democracy.  But  there  is  no  independent  appointment  to 
any  office  by  a  minister;  for  this  would  set  up  in  the 
Church  a  clerical  autocracy.  And  Methodism  is  equally 
remote  from  both  these  extremes.  Office  in  its  system 
is  not  a  reflex  of  the  wish  of  mere  numbers ;  that  would 
justify  direct  election  by  the  whole  body  of  members. 
This  is  the  method  of  democracy,  and  Methodism  is  not 
a  democracy.  Office  in  the  Methodist  Church  represents 
duties  to  be  discharged — the  duty  of  a  leader,  of  a  local 
preacher,  of  a  steward ;  and  the  nomination  of  the  minister 
is  simply  a  declaration  on  the  part  of  the  responsible 
pastor  of  the  church  that  the  person  named  is  fitted  to 
discharge  that  duty.  But  the  minister  cannot  of  his  own 
act  appoint. 

An  attempt  is  not  seldom  made  to  graft  on  Methodism 
some  supposed  "  reform  "  which  is  alien  to  its  genius ;  and 
the  attempt,  if  it  succeeds,  never  fails  to  bring  disaster. 
Who  studies  the  history  of  the  divisions  which,  since 
Wesley's  time,  have  broken  Methodism  asunder,  or  of  the 
strifes  which  have  arrested  its  progress,  will  see  that  they 
have  arisen,  never  on  any  question  of  doctrine,  but  always 
over  questions  of  polity.  And  in  every  case  the  cause  of 
the  trouble  has  been  the  loss  of  that  equipoise  which  is 
the  characteristic  feature  of  Methodism,  as  a  polity,  and 
the  secret  of  its  peace  and  its  vigour.  The  forces  which 
make  for  democratic  methods,  or  for  the  unchecked  rule  of 
the  ministers,  have  for  the  moment  obtained  the  ascen- 
dency, and  the  balance  of  forces  has  been  lost.  For 
Methodism,  it  must  always  be  remembered,  is  as  far  re- 


METHODISM    AS    A   POLITY  441 

moved  from  the  priestly  sway  of  Romanism  as  it  is  from 
the  structureless  disorder  of  Plymouth  Brethrenism.  It 
holds  to  the  pastoral  office,  but  does  not  exaggerate  its 
claims.  It  gives  laymen  the  frankest  partnership  in  both 
the  spiritual  work  and  the  financial  management  of  the 
Church ;  but  it  does  not  sacrifice  order,  and  ignore  facts, 
by  obliterating  all  diversities  of  function  betwixt  the 
layman  and  the  minister. 


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PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS 


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LONDON  :  PUBLISHED  BY  SMITH,  ELDER,  &  Co.,  15  WATERLOO  PLACE,  S,W. 


CHAPTER  I 
WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY 

"  A  CLEAR,  smooth  forehead,  an  aquiline  nose,  an  eye  the  brightest 
and  the  most  piercing  that  can  be  conceived,  and  a  freshness  of 
complexion,  scarcely  ever  to  be  found  at  his  years,  and  expressive 
of  the  most  perfect  health.  In  his  countenance  and  demeanour, 
there  was  a  cheerfulness  mingled  with  gravity ;  a  sprightliness, 
which  was  the  natural  result  of  an  unusual  flow  of  spirits.  His 
aspect,  particularly  in  profile,  had  a  strong  character  of  acuteness 
and  penetration.  ...  A  narrow,  plaited  stock,  a  coat  with  small 
upright  collar,  no  buckles  at  his  knees,  no  silk  or  velvet  in  any 
part  of  his  apparel,  and  a  head  as  white  as  snow,  gave  an  idea  of 
something  primitive  and  apostolical ;  while  an  air  of  neatness  and 
cleanliness  diffused  over  his  whole  person." 

This  is  the  figure  of  Wesley  as  seen  by  the  eyes  of  his 
contemporaries,  and  it  was  the  best  known  figure  in  the 
three  kingdoms  during  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Yet  in  this  little,  alert,  compact  figure,  with  its 
air  of  old-maidish  neatness,  dwelt — as  the  story  we  have 
told  proves — a  calm  intensity  of  energy  which  has  been 
rarely  paralleled  in  any  generation.  In  range,  speed, 
intensity,  and  effectiveness  Wesley  must  always  remain 
one  of  the  greatest  workers  known  to  mankind.  He 
seemed  to  live  many  lives  in  one,  and  each  life  was  of 
amazing  fulness.  He  preached  more  sermons,  travelled 
more  miles,  published  more  books,  wrote  more  letters, 
built  more  churches,  waged  more  controversies,  and  in- 
fluenced more  lives  than  any  other  man  in  English  history. 
And  through  it  all,  as  he  himself,  in  a  humorous  paradox, 
puts  it,  "  he  had  no  time  to  be  in  a  hurry ! " 

Lord  Rosebery  describes  Cromwell  as  "  a  practical 
mystic,  the  most  formidable  and  terrible  of  all  combina- 
tions." And  Wesley  was  exactly  that  "  most  formidable 
and  terrible  of  all  combinations,"  a  practical  mystic. 
His  life  thrilled  with  forces  which  streamed  upon  him 


446  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

from  spiritual  realms;  and  yet  he  kept  his  feet  on  the 
solid  earth  and  had  the  keenest  vision  for  the  facts  of 
earth.  He  knew  how  to  bring  to  the  service  of  far-off 
and  invisible  ideals  the  practical  sense,  the  knowledge  of 
men,  the  faculty  of  adjusting  means  to  ends,  of  choosing 
fit  instruments  and  shaping  effective  methods,  which  are 
the  characteristics  of  a  great  soldier,  or  of  a  successful 
captain  of  industry.  And  it  is  in  this  combination  of 
the  spiritual  with  the  practical,  of  ends  which  belong  to 
the  moral  order  with  methods  which  are  effective  in 
the  earthly  realm ;  this  wedlock  of  unlike  qualities — of 
ice  and  of  fire,  of  calmness  and  of  intensity,  of  serene 
composure  and  of  demonic  energy — that  the  secret  of 
Wesley's  power  lies. 

No  man  ever  moved  more  quickly,  and  none  was  ever 
less  in  a  hurry  than  he.  There  was  something  of  the 
inexorable  and  unhurrying  swiftness  of  a  planet  about 
him ;  and  something,  too,  of  its  shattering  impact.  And 
yet  a  strange  air  of  repose — of  the  quiet  which  is  born 
of  problems  solved,  and  of  victory  attained — lay  upon  him. 
There  are  certain  qualities  of  character  which  draw  other 
men  to  their  possessor  as  the  moon  draws  the  tides,  and 
sway  them,  as  the  winds  sway  the  forest.  Who  possesses 
these  qualities  is  inevitably,  and  by  gift  of  nature,  a  leader 
of  men.  And  Wesley  had  precisely  these  qualities.  But 
he  had  them  not  so  much  by  any  endowment  of  nature 
as  by  spiritual  creation.  He  carried  with  him  everywhere 
— after  his  conversion — a  certain  serenity  of  courage,  in 
the  presence  of  which  fear  grew  ashamed  of  itself;  a 
certain  swiftness  of  will,  a  strength  of  immovable  resolution 
when  once  conscience  had  spoken  and  duty  had  become 
clear,  which  made  crowds,  with  the  instinct  of  crowds  for 
a  true  leader,  follow  him  without  question. 

Wesley  had  ideals  beyond  the  reach  of  other  men's 
vision,  but  absolutely  clear  to  himself.  He  trod  with  an 
assured  step;  he  spoke  as  one  who  knew.  He  was 
absolutely  emptied  of  selfishness.  So  he  became  for  those 
about  him,  in  a  sense,  an  embodied  conscience.  Here 
was  one  human  spirit,  at  least,  utterly  given  up  to  divine 
things;  one  human  soul  in  which  religion  had  fulfilled 
all  its  offices.  And  with  all  his  radiant  cheerfulness 
there  was  something  of  the  unconscious  loftiness  of  Alpine 


WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY  447 

peaks  about  him ;  a  remoteness — as  though  caught  from 
some  purer  air — from  the  pursuits  and  desires  of  ordinary 
men.  His  very  face  was  a  rebuke  to  all  mean  things. 
When  he  came  to  a  town  the  crowds  gathered  about  him 
in  the  street;  the  little,  compact,  erect  figure  standing 
perhaps  on  a  table  brought  from  some  cottage  at  hand. 
His  look,  his  speech,  the  atmosphere  he  brought  with 
him,  his  accent  both  of  certainty  and  authority,  the 
ideals  by  which  he  tried  himself  and  others,  the  per- 
spective in  which  he  saw  things,  and  made  other  men 
see  them — it  was  for  a  moment  as  if  a  messenger  who 
belonged  to  another  spiritual  order  stood  amongst  men  ! 
Then  he  went  on  his  swift  way,  and  men  felt  as  if  some 
spiritual  presence  had  left  them.  Contact  with  him  was 
a  spiritual  education. 

And  yet  there  was  nothing  of  chilly  remoteness,  of 
monkish  austerity,  about  Wesley.  After  his  conversion, 
at  least,  no  human  being  less  like  a  monk  could  well  be 
imagined.  A  sort  of  perpetual  radiance  shone  in  him, 
and  streamed  from  him.  Alexander  Knox,  who  knew 
Wesley  well  and  judged  him  coolly,  dwells  in  astonished 
admiration  on  his  unclouded  cheerfulness.  "  My  ac- 
quaintance with  him,"  he  says,  "  has  done  more  to  teach 
me  what  a  heaven  upon  earth  is  implied  in  the  maturity 
of  Christian  piety  than  I  have  elsewhere  seen  or  heard 
or  read."  His  countenance  and  conversation  expressed 
an  habitual  gaiety  of  heart.  Wesley  himself  declared 
that  "he  had  not  felt  lowness  of  spirits  one  quarter  of 
an  hour  in  his  life.  Ten  thousand  cares  were  no  more 
weight  to  his  mind  than  ten  thousand  hairs  to  his  head." 

Perhaps  in  writing  those  words — words  which  may  well 
fill  ordinary  men  with  despairing  envy — Wesley's  memory 
was  coloured  by  the  gladness  of  the  moment.  He  did 
know  moods  of  depression,  and  these  are  reflected  again 
and  again  in  his  Journal.  But  these  records  only  give  a 
more  human  aspect  to  Wesley,  for  they  prove  that  he, 
too,  had  a  touch  of  human  infirmity.  And  it  is  char- 
acteristic of  him  that  in  each  case  he  cures  his  own 
despondency  by  the  medicine  of  hard  work. 

Wesley  was,  to  .quote  Hampson — like  Knox,  not  too 
friendly  a  critic — "of  exquisite  companionable  talents." 
Walsh,  that  Irish  saint  amongst  Wesley's  helpers  —  a 


448  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

combination  of  mystic  and  genius — discovered  even  too 
much  humour  in  Wesley's  conversation,  and  complained 
to  him  that,  amongst  the  three  or  four  persons  that 
tempted  him  to  levity,  "  You,  sir,  are  one,  by  your  witty 
proverbs."  Walsh,  however,  discovered  humour  in  Wes- 
ley probably  because  he  had  none  of  his  own.  But  that 
Wesley  had  in  the  highest  degree  the  gift  of  clear,  keen, 
wise  conversation  cannot  be  doubted.  He  could  have 
discussed  criticism  with  Pope,  politics  with  Swift,  litera- 
ture with  Dr.  Johnson,  or  philosophy  with  Berkeley,  on 
equal  terms — but  for  one  circumstance.  He  had  better 
things  to  do !  Dr.  Johnson,  himself  a  glutton  in  talk, 
complained  to  Patty  Wesley  of  her  brother :  "  I  hate  to 
meet  John  Wesley,"  he  said.  "The  dog  enchants  you 
with  his  conversation,  and  then  breaks  away  to  go  and 
visit  some  old  woman." 

But  for  Wesley,  the  "old  woman"  represented  duty. 
She  was  an  immortal  spirit,  as  precious  in  the  sight  of 
God  as  Dr.  Johnson  himself.  If  Christ  valued  her  enough 
to  die  for  her,  then,  as  Wesley's  conscience  told  him,  he 
might  well  value  her  enough  to  sacrifice  ease  that  he 
might  go  and  comfort  her.  "  I  find  time  to  visit  the  sick 
and  the  poor,"  Wesley  was  accustomed  to  say,  "  and  I 
must  do  it  if  I  believe  the  Bible.  These  are  the  marks  by 
which  the  great  Shepherd  will  know  His  sheep." 

Once,  when  tempted  to  linger  in  a  lovely  landscape, 
Wesley  cried,  "  I  believe  there  is  an  eternity,  I  must  arise 
and  go  hence ; "  and  those  words  express  the  temper  of 
his  life.  He  lived  in  the  spirit  of  Andrew  Marvel's  strong 
lines : — 

"Ever  at  my  back  I  hear 
Time's  winged  chariots  hurrying  near." 

And  this,  Johnson  complained,  "  is  very  disagreeable  to  a 
man  who  loves  to  fold  his  legs  and  have  his  talk  out  as 
I  do." 

For  all  this,  it  may  be  repeated,  there  was  no  touch  of 
the  ascetic  in  Wesley.  He  did  not  understand  children, 
as  his  Kingswood  experiment  proves,  but  he  loved  them 
and  had  the  art  of  winning  their  love.  And  he  stamped 
these  qualities  on  his  helpers.  "  Spend  an  hour  a  week 
with  the  children  in  every  large  town  " — was  his  rule  for 


WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY  449 

them — "  whether  you  like  it  or  not.  Talk  with  them 
every  time  you  see  any  at  home.  Pray  in  earnest  for 
them."  Wesley  did  not,  again,  understand  women,  as  his 
love  affairs  abundantly  show.  But  no  other  man  in  the 
England  of  that  day  had  so  many  friendships  with  saintly 
and  noble  women  as  he. 

Wesley's  limitations  were  bred  of  his  very  virtues.  His 
life  was  governed  by  a  relentless  method.  This,  applied 
to  his  body,  made  it  the  toughest  bit  of  human  flesh  and 
blood  that  walked  English  soil  in  those  days.  Applied  to 
his  work,  it  enabled  him  to  accomplish  a  volume  of  busi- 
ness which  yet  makes  him  the  rebuke  and  despair  of  all 
other  workers.  There  is  something  almost  amusing  in  the 
unsparing  discipline  he  applied  to  his  own  body,  until  his 
appetites  became  the  most  docile  servants  that  ever 
obeyed  a  human  will.  He  made,  as  his  brother  Samuel 
complained,  almost  a  sin  of  abstinence.  The  method  he 
took  to  ascertain  with  how  little  sleep  his  body  could  be 
kept  in  effective  working  order  is  amusing.  He  tells  the 
tale  thus : — 

"  If  any  one  desires  to  know  exactly  what  quantity  of  sleep  bis 
own  constitution  requires,  he  may  very  easily  make  the  experiment 
which  I  made  about  fifty  years  ago.  I  then  waked  every  night 
about  twelve  or  one,  and  lay  awake  for  some  time.  I  readily 
concluded  that  this  arose  from  my  being  in  bed  longer  than  nature 
required.  To  be  satisfied,  I  procured  an  alarm,  which  waked  me 
the  next  morning  at  seven  (near  an  hour  earlier  than  I  rose  the  day 
before),  yet  I  lay  awake  again  at  night.  The  second  morning  I  rose 
at  six;  but  notwithstanding  this,  I  lay  awake  the  second  night. 
The  third  morning  I  rose  at  five ;  but,  nevertheless,  I  lay  awake 
the  third  night.  The  fourth  morning  I  rose  at  four,  as,  by  the  grace 
of  God,  I  have  done  ever  since.  And  I  lay  awake  no  more.  And 
I  do  not  now  lie  awake,  taking  the  year  round,  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
together  in  a  month.  By  the  same  experiment,  rising  earlier  and 
earlier  every  morning,  may  any  one  find  how  much  sleep  he  really 
wants." 

No  human  soul,  hi  a  word,  ever  got  more  out  of  the 
body  it  inhabited  than  Wesley  did  out  of  his.  His 
economy  of  time  and  sleep  and  food  extended  to  every- 
thing else.  He  wasted,  says  one  of  his  biographers,  not 
even  so  much  as  a  sheet  of  paper.  His  moments  were 
measured  out  as  an  anxious  chemist  weighs  out  his  drugs, 

2  F 


450  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

and  assigned — as  if  in  scruples  and  drachms — to  various 
duties.  He  had  a  fixed  hour  for  every  purpose,  and  no 
company,  no  conversation,  no  pleasure  was  permitted  to 
vary,  by  a  hair's-breadth,  the  inflexible  order  of  his  life. 
He  wrote,  he  travelled,  he  visited  the  sick,  he  did  every- 
thing in  certain  hours ;  and  those  hours  were  inviolable. 

But  the  iron  resolution  with  which  Wesley  mapped  out 
the  use  of  every  faculty,  the  discharge  of  every  duty,  the 
employment  of  every  moment  of  time,  had  its  disadvan- 
tages. It  made  him,  from  some  aspects,  a  machine.  It 
gave  him  no  time  for  friendships.  Domestic  life  under 
such  unyielding  conditions  became  impossible.  His  wife 
had  a  genius  for  making  herself  and  those  about  her 
miserable,  and  under  any  environment  would  have  suc- 
ceeded in  being  unhappy.  But  Wesley,  as  a  husband, 
might  have  sorely  tried  the  patience  of  any  wife.  She 
must  have  found  herself  dismissed  to  one  tiny  compart- 
ment of  his  many-celled  life.  And  even  a  woman  of 
generous  and  self-sacrificing  temper  might  well  have 
found  the  experience  too  heroic. 

It  is  a  mistake,  of  course,  to  think  that  Wesley  was  in  a 
semi-miraculous  way  exempt  from  ill  health  of  every  sort. 
He,. suffered  from  hereditary  gout,  the  disease  of  which  his 
mother  died.  He  underwent  a  serious  surgical  operation 
in  1764;  in  1789  he  had  an  attack  of  diabetes.  The 
strain  of  his  work  was  interrupted  again  and  again  by 
illness.  He  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  sufficient  hints  of 
physical  weakness  to  have  justified  a  man  of  less  heroic 
spirit  nursing  himself  into  a  state  of  soft-fibred  indolence. 

Beside  his  Journal,  Wesley  kept  a  diary,  a  little  book 
which  he  carried  continually  with  him,  and  in  which  he 
noted  in  shorthand  his  hour  of  rising,  what  he  read  or 
wrote  till  breakfast,  and  the  exact  use  to  which  every 
moment  of  the  day  was  turned.  On  the  first  page  of  each 
of  these  little  books  he  always  wrote  the  following  sen- 
tences :  "  I  resolve,  Deo  juvante,  ( I )  To  devote  an  hour 
morning  and  evening  to  private  prayer,  no  pretence  or 
excuse  whatsoever ;  (2)  To  converse  Kara  &eov,  no  light- 
ness, no  €vrpa7T€\.la."  How  Wesley,  with  so  tremendous 
a  volume  of  work  poured  into  his  waking  moments,  could 
devote  an  hour  morning  and  evening  to  private  prayer 
is  almost  unintelligible.  But  he  did  it,  and  all  the  other 


WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY  451 

hours  of  the  day  took  calmness,  serenity,  strength  from 
those  two  sacred  hours  which  marked  their  boundaries. 
But  that  phrase,  "  no  pretence,  no  excuse  whatsoever,"  is 
characteristic  of  Wesley.  All  his  purposes  had  that  note 
of  supreme  resolution.  Other  things  must  yield  to  them. 
His  own  plans  were  for  him  a  categorical  imperative. 

Few  men,  again,  have  ever  been  more  systematically 
generous  than  Wesley.  He  lived  with  the  utmost  economy 
himself,  and  gave  away  the  whole  surplus  of  his  income. 
As  he  tells  the  story :  "  When  he  had  thirty  pounds  a  year, 
he  lived  on  twenty-eight,  and  gave  away  two.  The  next 
year,  receiving  sixty  pounds,  he  still  lived  on  twenty- 
eight,  and  gave  away  two-and-thirty.  The  third  year  he 
received  ninety  pounds,  and  gave  away  sixty-two.  The 
fourth  year  he  received  a  hundred  and  twenty  pounds. 
Still  he  lived  on  twenty-eight,  and  gave  to  the  poor 
ninety-two."  But  Hampson  says,  with  a  certain  degree  of 
truth,  "  his  charities  seem  to  have  been  rather  the  result 
of  a  sense  of  duty  than  of  any  tenderness  of  nature." 

Wesley's  preaching,  no  doubt,  suffered  from  his  over- 
crowded habit  of  life.  He  was  accustomed  to  say  he  could 
preach  three  or  four  times  a  day  without  any  trouble,  and 
he  acted  on  that  theory — with  the  result  that  he  often 
preached  with  insufficient  preparation,  and  with  less  effect 
than  he  might  have  done.  Harnpson  says  that  when  he 
gave  himself  sufficient  time  for  study  he  succeeded,  and 
when  he  did  not  he  frequently  failed.  "He  was  some- 
times flat  and  insipid.  He  often  appeared  in  the  pulpit 
thoroughly  exhausted  with  labour  and  want  of  rest,  but 
wherever  he  was  he  made  it  a  point  to  preach  if  he  could 
stand  upon  his  legs."  Hampson  adds  the  curious  remark 
that  whenever  Wesley  "fell  into  anecdote  and  story- 
telling "  his  sermon  was  a  failure.  What  is  a  resource 
to  ordinary  men  was  to  Wesley  fatal !  "  We  have  scarcely 
ever,"  he  says,  "  heard  from  him  a  tolerable  sermon  in 
which  a  story  was  introduced." 

Wesley's  literary  work,  again,  suffered  in  the  same 
way  from  haste  and  inadequate  opportunity.  He  was  a 
tireless  and  omnivorous  reader,  and  he  read  under  con- 
ditions which  to  other  men  would  have  made  reading 
impossible.  He  was  a  poor  rider,  almost  as  poor  as 
Napoleon ;  though,  unlike  Napoleon,  he  did  not  require 


452  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

wooden  steps  by  which  to  mount  his  horse.  Wesley  on 
horseback  was  the  best-known  figure  on  all  the  roads  of 
the  three  kingdoms  of  that  day.  It  was  the  figure  of  a 
man  in  haste ;  great  duties  behind  him  just  discharged, 
and  great  duties  still  beckoning  him  in  front.  And 
betwixt  duty  finished  and  duty  beckoning,  he  went,  book 
in  hand,  and  read  as  he  went.  With  the  reins  lying  loose 
on  his  horse's  neck,  and  his  hands  grasping  a  volume  held 
up  to  his  eyes,  he  would  ride  fifty  or  sixty  miles  a  day. 
In  this  fashion  he  rode  on  an  average  four  thousand  miles 
every  year,  and  did  it  for  over  fifty  years.  During  those 
fifty  years  he  preached  more  than  forty  thousand  times, 
to  all  sorts  of  audiences,  under  all  sorts  of  conditions.  No 
other  man  in  history,  except  perhaps  Whitefield,  was  so 
familiar  with  the  faces  of  a  crowd,  spent  so  much  time 
amongst  crowds,  or  understood  so  completely  their  moods. 
But  who  beside  Wesley  ever  turned  the  saddle,  and  the 
open  road,  and  the  changing  English  skies,  into  a  perma- 
nent study ! 

But  his  reading  had,  as  was  inevitable,  the  vice  of  haste. 
It  bred  swift  and  hurried  judgments,  born  of  half  know- 
ledge. When  Wesley  dismounted  at  the  close  of  the 
day,  or  at  night,  when  the  last  lingering  hearers  had  left 
him,  he  would  record  in  his  Journal,  in  his  curious  short- 
hand, all  the  hasty  recollections  and  judgments  of  the 
day.  So  his  Journals  are  packed  with  the  queerest  obiter 
dicta;  judgments  on  men,  events,  and  books;  sentences 
which  represent,  not  large  knowledge  and  reflection,  but 
only  the  momentary  impulse  of  his  feeling,  or  of  his  pre- 
judices, born  of  the  swift  and  broken  glance  at  the  pages 
of  a  book  as  he  jolted  over  some  rough  country  road. 

Much  of  Wesley's  literary  work,  done  under  such 
conditions,  shows  marks  of  inadequate  care.  He  was 
never  a  writer  at  leisure.  He  scorned  attempts  at 
style.  To  say  what  he  wanted  in  the  shortest  words,  and 
in  the  shortest  sentences,  was  his  ideal.  And  there  is 
very  much  to  be  said  for  his  ideal.  In  literature,  as  in 
mathematics,  a  straight  line  is  the  shortest  distance  be- 
twixt two  points.  Wesley,  at  least,  never  thought  in 
curves,  and  never  wrote  in  spirals.  But  much  of  his 
writing  is  marred  by  visible  hurry. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  his  books,  when  they 


WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY  453 

were  not  controversial  accidents,  were  written  for  the 
constituency  of  his  own  followers — a  great,  docile,  un- 
taught multitude,  who  had  towards  Wesley  a  dumb 
and  filial  reverence,  and  for  whom  Wesley  had  the 
protecting  concern  of  a  father.  He  would  put  all  litera- 
ture within  their  reach ;  and  to  do  it  he  must  translate 
it  into  their  language.  So  he  was  for  ever  condensing, 
abridging,  and  publisning  books  for  his  people.  But  his 
methods  were  hurried.  To  quote  Hampson,  "he  just 
looked  over  his  author  and  drew  his  pen  across  the 
passages  he  disapproved,  and  this  with  so  little  accuracy 
that  he  frequently  left  sentences  directly  contrary  to  his 
own  principles."  Wesley  read  and  wrote,  indeed,  with 
such  an  heroic  economy  of  time  that  he  sometimes  not 
only  forgot  what  he  had  read  and  what  he  had  written, 
but  what  he  had  recommended !  The  one  serious  literary 
scandal  which  befell  him,  his  reproduction  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
pamphlet  on  the  American  Revolution,  was  due  to  this. 

Wesley  had  an  almost  rash  frankness.  He  could  not 
always  keep  the  secrets  of  other  people,  and  he  could 
never  keep  his  own.  To  one  who  complained  of  his 
brother's  want  of  reticence,  Charles  Wesley  replied,  "  You 
expect  he  will  keep  his  own  secrets  ?  Let  me  whisper  it 
in  your  ears :  he  never  could  do  it  since  he  was  born  !  It 
is  a  gift  that  God  has  not  given  him."  "  My  brother,"  said 
Charles  on  another  occasion,  in  disgusted  accents,  "  was,  I 
believe,  born  for  the  benefit  of  knaves."  He  was  of  the 
sweetest  possible  temper ;  he  forgave  easily,  generously, 
completely — and  perhaps  too  often!  When  aroused,  he 
was  a  man  of  keenest  penetration,  with  a  gift  for  speech 
which  bit  like  the  stroke  of  a  whip,  or  cut  like  the  edge 
of  a  sword-blade.  And  yet  there  was  in  his  character  a 
vein  of  simplest  generosity,  which  made  him  almost 
gullible !  His  sweetness  of  temper  sometimes  permitted 
ignoble  men  to  have  a  place  about  him  they  did  not 
deserve.  Hampson  says  that  he  "had  no  attachments 
that  partook  of  the  genius  of  friendship " ;  but  that  is 
certainly  untrue.  He  clung,  not  seldom  with  an  over- 
patient  fidelity,  to  his  friends.  And  it  was  inevitable  that 
round  a  figure  so  strong,  so  sweet,  a  character  of  such 
charm  and  power,  strange  crowds  gathered.  The  earnest 
wanted  a  leader.  The  weak  came  to  lean  on  him,  the  timid 


454  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

to  catch  the  infection  of  his  courage,  the  selfish  to  profit 
by  his  influence.  And  Wesley  had  not  the  critical  eyes 
of  his  brother  Charles.  He  chose  his  greater  comrades 
nobly — Fletcher,  Coke,  and  many  another ;  but  he  tolerated 
spirits  about  him  less  lofty  than  these,  and  his  shrewder 
brother  Charles  looked  on  these  with  unfriendly  eyes. 
"Are  you  one  of  my  brother's  favourites,"  he  inquired 
once  of  a  certain  person,  and  on  receiving  the  reply  that  he 
was  not,  Charles  said  bluntly,  "  I  do  not  like  you  the  worse 
for  that."  "  It  signifies  nothing,"  Charles  complained  to 
his  brother  once,  "to  tell  you  anything;  for  whom  you 
love  once  you  will  love  on  through  thick  and  thin." 

But  this  fine  generosity  on  the  part  of  Wesley,  we 
repeat,  had  its  risks.  There  gathered  round  him  in  his 
latter  days  a  group  of  followers  almost  too  docile.  They 
reflected  all  his  habits.  They  copied  his  gestures,  his  dress, 
his  accents,  his  prejudices.  "  If  he  left  off  tea,  which  he 
did  in  1742,"  says  Hampson,  "they  did  the  same.  If  he 
lay  upon  boards,  or  lived  on  vegetables,  they  did  so  too ; 
and  because  he  was  fond  of  morning  preaching,  they 
observed  the  practice,  at  five  in  the  morning,  winter  and 
summer,  though,  very  often,  they  could  scarcely  collect 
half-a-dozen  hearers.  Some  imitated  his  handwriting, 
and  so  exactly  copied  his  style  and  manner  of  speaking, 
that  the  difference  was  almost  imperceptible." 

All  this  inevitably  strengthened  the  masterful  note  in 
Wesley's  character.  He  became,  in  his  latter  days,  less 
patient  of  argument,  less  tolerant  of  any  judgment  which 
clashed  with  his  own.  He  was  reluctant  to  hear  reasons 
intended  to  change  a  purpose  on  which  he  had  set  his 
mind.  "When  anything  was  proposed,"  says  Hampson, 
"which  he  disapproved,  or  any  attempt  to  go  into  a  de- 
bate of  his  favourite  doctrines,  it  was  common  with  him 
to  tell  a  story  or  give  out  a  hymn  to  put  an  end  to 
the  conversation."  Men  of  strong  will  and  independent 
judgment  came  to  resent  this;  and  thus  in  his  later 
years  Wesley  drew  close  to  himself  those  who  opposed 
the  least  resistance  to  his  own  opinions  and  plans. 

Coleridge  denies  to  Wesley  the  philosophic  mind ;  Isaac 
Taylor  says  he  had  no  touch  of  intuitional  genius ;  he  had 
only  the  logical  intellect,  &c.  It  is  not  quite  clear  what 
this  tangle  of  phrases  means.  Wesley's  work  was  not  to 


WESLEY'S  PERSONALITY  455 

spin  out  philosophical  reflections,  or  to  write  volumes  of 
abstract  dissertations.  He  lived  in  a  real  world ;  he  dealt 
with  men  and  women,  with  human  passions  and  sorrows, 
with  the  tragedies  of  human  life,  and  the  problems  of 
the  human  soul.  He  did  the  work  of  a  preacher,  of  an 
administrator,  of  a  statesman.  All  his  energies  were  in 
close  and  constant  relation  to  the  everyday  facts  of  human 
life.  And  the  fruits  of  his  life  are  not  to  be  sought  in 
a  library,  or  measured  by  printed  pages.  They  are  to  be 
found  in  history.  Their  imperishable  record  is  in  human 
lives. 

That  he  had  some  touch  of  creative  genius  is  proved  by 
the  great  and  living  Churches  which  to-day  bear  his  name. 
The  re-birth  of  the  Christian  religion  in  English  history  is 
directly  traceable  to  John  Wesley.  And  what  monument 
built  to  statesman  or  soldier,  to  poet  or  inventor  or  dis- 
coverer, can  compare  with  a  memorial  like  this  ! 


CHAPTER   II 
WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS 

ALL  Wesley's  love  affairs  were  disasters,  but  his  marriage 
was  a  tragedy — a  tragedy  made  only  the  more  complete 
by  a  certain  ignoble  aspect  it  wears.  Yet  both  for  the 
light  it  sheds  on  his  character,  and  as  a  factor  in  his  life, 
the  story  of  that  marriage  has  to  be  told. 

On  the  subject  of  marriage  generally  both  the  Wesley s 
held  at  least  semi-monastic  views.  Wesley  published  in 
1743  a  tract,  "  Thoughts  on  Marriage  and  a  Single  Life," 
which  might  almost  have  been  written  by  a  convinced  and 
ascetic  Roman  Catholic.  The  celibate  state,  he  taught, 
might  not  be  of  imperative  and  universal  obligation ; 
it  was  certainly  a  loftier  state  than  that  of  marriage. 
Marriage  was  a  concession  to  human  weakness,  and  ought 
to  be  postponed  as  long  as  possible  in  all  cases,  and  for- 
gone absolutely  where  there  was  sufficient  grace  to  enable 
this  to  be  done.  When  they  returned  from  Georgia,  the 
brothers  made  a  compact,  each  pledging  himself  not  to 
marry  without  the  consent  of  the  other. 

But  nature  is  stronger  than  even  the  most  austere 
sacerdotal  theories.  It  made  itself  first  felt  in  Charles 
Wesley.  In  1748,  when  he  was  over  forty  years  of  age, 
he  propounds  to  his  brother  as  a  sort  of  conundrum, 
"  How  know  I  if  it  is  best  for  me  to  marry  ?  Certainly 
better  now  than  later ;  and  if  not  now,  what  security  that 
I  shall  then  ?  It  should  be  now  or  not  at  all."  He  pro- 
ceeded in  the  characteristic  Wesley  fashion  to  collect  the 
opinions  of  all  his  friends  on  this  subject.  His  brother's 
tractate  stood  in  the  way.  He  could  hardly  flout  it 
publicly.  This  difficulty,  however,  was  removed  by  the 
Conference  of  1 748  taking  the  "  Thoughts  on  Marriage " 
in  hand,  and  convincing  its  author  "  that  he  might  be 
wrong " ;  that,  at  least,  there  was  something  to  be  said 
on  the  other  side  of  the  question.  Wesley  records :  "  In 

456 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  457 

June  1748  we  had  a  Conference  in  London.  Several  of 
our  brethren  then  objected  to  the  '  Thoughts  on  Marriage,' 
and,  hi  full  and  friendly  debate,  convinced  me  that  a 
believer  might  marry  witnout  suffering  loss  in  his  soul." 

This  was  not  a  very  encouraging  decision,  but  Charles 
Wesley  was  willing  to  take  the  risk.  He  fixed  his  choice 
on  Miss  Sally  Gwynne.  She  was  a  girl  of  twenty-three, 
the  daughter  of  a  good  family,  and  herself  of  very  fine  and 
attractive  qualities.  The  story  of  the  courtship  sheds  a 
curious  light  on  the  social  habits  of  the  day.  Charles 
Wesley  first  approached  his  brother  to  secure  his  approval, 
and  discovered  to  his  delight  that  John  was  already  con- 
templating matrimony  for  him.  He  had,  indeed,  mentally 
selected  three  young  ladies,  from  whom  Charles  might 
take  his  choice,  and  Miss  Gwynne  was  one  of  the  three. 
Mrs.  Gwynne,  the  mother  of  Sally,  was  then  approached. 
She  was  the  business  mind  of  her  household  ;  and  while 
approving  of  Charles,  she  discussed  the  whole  matter  from 
a  strictly  business  standpoint. 

The  details  are  amusing.  It  was  solemnly  conceded, 
for  example,  that  the  bridegroom  should  be  at  liberty  to 
"  keep  up  a  vegetable  diet,"  and  to  travel  as  an  evangelist, 
but  not  to  go  to  Ireland — a  condition  which,  later,  was 
withdrawn.  Charles  Wesley,  on  his  part,  had  to  show 
an  income  of  £100  a  year.  After  some  difficulty,  John 
Wesley  agreed  to  give  his  brother  security  for  £100  a  year 
on  the  profits  of  his  books;  but  Mrs.  Gwynne  rejected  this 
as  not  being  a  sufficiently  solid  asset.  She  had  a  practical 
woman's  doubts  as  to  the  market  value  of  literature. 

Negotiations  came  to  a  standstill,  till  one  of  Charles 
Wesley's  friends,  Perronet,  broke  in  on  the  proceedings  by 
a  letter  to  the  mother  of  the  bride.  "  If  you  and  worthy 
Mr.  Gwynne  are  of  opinion,"  he  wrote,  "  that  the  match 
proposed  by  the  Rev.  Charles  Wesley  be  of  God,  neither  of 
you  will  suffer  an  objection  drawn  from  the  world  to  break 
it  off!"  This  remonstrance  proved  effective;  Charles 
Wesley  was  allowed  a  brief  interval  of  courtship,  inter- 
spersed with  preaching,  and  during  which  he  wrote  no 
less  than  seventeen  hymns — principally  addressed  to  the 
earthly  object  of  his  affections;  ana  on  April  8,  1749,  the 
marriage  took  place. 

Some  unkind  critic  wrote   that  it  resembled  a  funeral 


458  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

rather  than  a  wedding ;  but  gravity  of  behaviour  was  the 
note  of  a  good  Methodist  in  those  days.  The  marriage,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  proved  one  of  singular  felicity.  His  wife, 
to  a  very  tender  and  loving  spirit,  united  an  almost 
masculine  strength  and  sanity  of  judgment.  She  became 
the  mother  of  eight  children,  filled  her  husband's  life  with 
serenest  happiness,  and  outlived  him  many  years,  dying  at 
the  advanced  age  of  eighty-six.  The  marriage  of  at  least 
one  of  the  Wesley  household  thus  proved  to  be  a  very 
happy  experiment.  As  one  of  its  results,  however,  it 
changed  the  character  of  Charles  Wesley's  work.  He  was 
anchored  now  in  a  happy  home,  his  children  came  fast 
about  him.  He  could  no  longer  take  any  wide  flight 
as  an  itinerating  evangelist,  and  his  preaching  tours 
were  practically  limited  henceforth  to  the  roads  betwixt 
London  and  Bristol. 

John  Wesley,  however,  was  far  less  fortunate  in  his 
excursions  into  the  realm  of  sentiment.  All  his  love 
affairs  were  blunders,  and  he  ended  by  selecting  what  was 
probably  the  most  absolutely  unfit  woman  in  the  three 
kingdoms  to  be  his  wife.  Such  figures  as  those  of  Betty 
Kirkham,  of  Mrs.  Pendarvis — the  "  Aspasia  "  of  a  literary 
correspondence — and  Miss  Susie  Hopkey,  of  Georgia,  flit 
briefly  across  the  landscape  of  Wesley's  life.  But  the 
story  of  a  more  serious  entanglement  has  to  be  told. 

In  August  1748,  Wesley,  while  at  Newcastle,  suffered 
one  of  his  rare  attacks  of  illness.  It  lasted  only  a  few 
days,  and  it  did  not  wholly  interrupt  his  preaching ;  but 
during  its  brief  continuance  he  was  nursed  by  Grace 
Murray,  one  of  the  staff  of  the  Orphan  House  at  Newcastle. 
Now  sickness  was  for  Wesley  always  a  period  of  what  may 
be  called  matrimonial  peril.  In  health  he  was  too  busy, 
too  preoccupied,  too  eagerly  intent  on  his  work,  to  find 
time  to  think  of  marriage.  And  it  may  be  added,  he 
seldom  stopped  long  enough  in  one  place  to  make  any 
acquaintance  which  could  lead  to  marriage.  But  when  he 
was  sick,  he  felt  the  need  of  a  woman's  gentle  ministra- 
tion. He  had  a  simple-minded  but  quixotic  faith  in  the 
goodness  of  all  women,  and  seemed  always  ready  to  pro- 
pose to  the  particular  face  that  at  the  moment  bent  over 
him  in  his  sickness.  He  was  thrice  sick :  at  Georgia,  in 
1737>  where  Miss  Hopkey  nursed  him;  at  Newcastle,  in 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  459 

1 748,  where  Grace  Murray  nursed  him ;  and  in  London, 
in  1761,  where  Mrs.  Vazeille  nursed  him.  And  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  Wesley  wanted  to  marry  each  of  his  nurses  in 
turn ! 

Grace  Murray  was  a  widow  of  twenty-eight.  She  was  of 
Scottish  blood ;  political  troubles  had  brought  poverty  on 
her  family ;  and  sne  herself  had  been  at  one  time  a  domestic. 
But  many  facts  make  it  clear  that  she  was  a  woman  of 
curious  and  dangerous  charm.  Wesley  himself  gives  with 
prosaic  minuteness  a  catalogue  of  her  qualities : — 

"  She  was  remarkably  neat ;  nicely  frugal,  yet  not  sordid  ;  gifted 
with  a  large  amount  of  common-sense  ;  indefatigably  patient,  and 
inexpressibly  tender  ;  quick,  cleanly,  skilful ;  of  an  engaging  beha- 
viour, and  of  a  mild,  sprightly,  cheerful  and  yet  serious  temper ; 
while,  lastly,  her  gifts  for  usefulness  were  such  as  he  (Wesley) 
had  not  seen  equalled.''^ 

The  gift  of  being  "  inexpressibly  tender "  had  for 
Wesley's  tired  mind  and  body,  as  he  lay  sick,  a  perilous 
charm ;  and  when  Grace  Murray's  duties  as  nurse  drew 
to  an  end  he  proposed  to  marry  her.  She  seemed  amazed, 
and  said,  "  This  is  too  great  a  blessing  to  me;  I  cannot  tell 
how  to  believe  it.  This  is  all  I  could  have  wished  for 
under  heaven  !"  To  marry  Wesley  would,  no  doubt,  have 
been  for  her  a  great  promotion ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact — 
though  she  did  not  inform  Wesley  of  the  circumstance — 
she  was  at  that  moment  practically  engaged  to  one  of  his 
helpers,  John  Bennet,  whom  she  had  nursed  a  year  before. 

The  story  that  follows,  if  told  in  a  novel  as  a  picture  of 
masculine  simplicity,  and  of  feminine  caprice,  would  seem 
extravagant.  It  is  related  with  courageous  frankness  in 
Tyerman's  "  Wesley,"  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
main  facts.  The  story  is  taken  from  authentic  docu- 
ments, one  of  which  at  least  was  revised  by  Wesley  him- 
self. It  is  a  curious  drama,  with  an  absorbed  evangelist 
as  lover ;  a  highly  impressionable  woman,  whom  her  own 
sex  at  least  would  sharply  sum  up  as  an  incurable  flirt, 
as  the  object  of  his  affections ;  a  patient  and  determined 
rival,  and  an  interfering  brother,  as  the  other  actors. 
Grace  Murray  proceeded  to  "  run,"  with  equally  "  inexpres- 
sible tenderness,"  her  two  lovers ;  and  the  mere  dates  of 


460  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

the  story  show  with  what  easy  facility  she  transferred  her 
emotions  from  one  to  the  other  in  turn. 

A  week  after  proposing  marriage,  Wesley  had  to  start 
on  a  preaching  tour ;  before  doing  so,  he  told  Grace 
Murray  he  was  convinced  God  intended  her  to  be  his 
wife.  She  thereupon  protested  that  to  be  left  behind  was 
"more  than  she  could  bear";  and  Wesley  took  her  with 
him  as  a  helper  in  his  services.  When  he  reached 
Bennet's  circuit,  he  left  Grace  Murray  behind,  quite 
unconscious  of  the  relations  betwixt  the  pair.  Within 
a  week  Bennet  wrote  to  Wesley  asking  his  consent  to 
marry  Grace  Murray,  and  with  his  letter  came  one  from 
the  lady  herself  saying  she  believed  it  was  the  will  of  God 
she  should  marry — not  Wesley  but — Bennet ! 

Wesley  replied  in  astonished  terms;  but  he  was  now 
absorbed  afresh  in  his  work,  and  he  accepted  the  situation 
with  a  magnanimity  few  men  could  have  shown,  and  most 
women  would  not  have  admired.  The  too  impressionable 
Grace  Murray,  indeed,  was  not  willing  that  her  romance 
should  end  so  abruptly  and  so  soon.  For  six  months  she 
maintained  a  correspondence  with  both  men,  and  per- 
suaded each  in  turn  that  she  loved  him  only.  She 
seemed,  indeed,  to  really  believe  that  she  belonged  to 
the  one  whose  letter  she  had  last  read. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  she  was  one  of  the 
"helpers"  employed  in  Wesley's  work,  and  in  February 
1749,  Wesley,  then  about  to  visit  Ireland,  proposed  to 
take  her  with  him  to  assist  in  his  services  there.  She 
sent  Bennet  the  intelligence,  and  told  him  that  "if  he 
loved  her"  he  must  come  to  her  at  once. 

Bennet  could  not  come  ;  and  Grace  Murray  told  Wesley, 
with  the  only  flash  of  frankness  she  showed  in  the 
whole  history,  how  matters  stood  betwixt  her  and  Bennet. 
After  much  discussion,  it  was  agreed  that  the  contract 
with  Bennet  was  not  binding ;  she  belonged  to  Wesley. 
Accordingly  she  accompanied  Wesley  and  took  part  in 
his  services  throughout  Ireland. 

In  August,  Bennet  and  Wesley  met  at  Epworth;  and 
Bennet  told  Wesley  that  Grace  Murray  had  sent  him  all 
his  (Wesley's)  letters  to  her.  The  feminine  conscience, 
where  matters  of  express  and  clear  duty  are  concerned, 
is  usually  more  sensitive  than  even  that  of  a  man ;  but 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  461 

that  vague,  indefinable  thing,  "  a  sense  of  honour,"  is,  for 
some  women,  not  only  a  thing  unpossessed,  but  a  thing 
uncomprehended.  To  give  the  letters  which  had  been 
written  by  one  lover,  in  all  the  confidence  of  affection, 
to  a  rival  was  an  act  of  feminine  treachery  which  few 
men  could  forgive.  To  Wesley's  stubborn  sense  of  hon- 
our, the  act  must  have  seemed  nothing  less  than  base.  It 
visibly  chilled  the  ardour  of  his  affection  for  its  perpe- 
trator, and  perhaps  helps  to  explain  his  willingness  to 
postpone  his  marriage  with  Grace  Murray  when  that  lady 
was  eager  for  it.  After  this  stage  the  lady  is  plainly  more 
"  willing  " — in  alternating  patches,  indeed,  after  her  char- 
acteristic fashion — than  the  gentleman. 

But  the  act,  if  it  proved  how  odd  a  sense  of  honour 
Grace  Murray  possessed,  at  least  proved  one  thing — she 
loved  Bennet!  And  Wesley  decided  the  pah*  ought  to 
marry  at  once,  and  wrote  a  brief  note  to  Grace  Murray 
telling  her  so. 

When  she  received  it  she  ran  to  Wesley  in  an  agony 
of  tears  and  begged  him  "  not  to  talk  so  unless  he  designed 
to  kill  her."  Wesley  hesitated  ;  tears  on  a  face  he  loved 
were  almost  irresistible.  But  he  kept  to  his  decision  to 
give  her  up.  She  was  ill,  and  sent  for  him.  "  How  can 
you  think  I  love  any  one  better  than  I  love  you  ? "  she 
cried.  "  I  love  you  a  thousand  times  better  than  I  ever 
loved  John  Bennet  in  my  life."  That  same  evening, 
when  Bennet  in  turn  came,  she  promised  to  be  his  wife ! 
Was  there  ever  before  so  active  a  transfer  of  affections 
from  one  suitor  to  another ! 

On  September  6  Wesley  asked  her  bluntly,  "Which 
will  you  choose  ? "  She  replied :  "  I  am  determined  by 
conscience  as  well  as  by  inclination  to  live  and  die  with 
you."  Both  Wesley  and  the  lady  wrote  to  Bennet  in 
these  terms.  Here,  at  last,  the  matter  was  surely  settled. 
Grace  Murray  urged  Wesley  to  marry  her  immediately. 
She  understood  herself  too  well  not  to  know  the  risk  of 
delay !  But  Wesley,  always  the  most  leisurely  of  lovers, 
now  wished  to  satisfy  John  Bennet;  to  procure  his 
brother's  consent ;  to  explain  his  reasons  for  marrying 
to  all  his  preachers  ana  societies,  and  to  desire  their 
prayers;  and  this  process,  he  calculated,  would  take 
"  about  a  year." 


462  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

Here  was  a  catalogue  of  delays  and  uncertainties !  The 
lady  agreed  to  wait,  but  protested  she  would  wait  no 
longer  than  a  year,  and  plainly  so  tedious  and  circuitous 
an  approach  to  marriage  unsettled  her  easily  transferred 
affections  once  more. 

The  business  of  satisfying  John  Bennet  proved  lengthy, 
and  during  its  progress  Charles  Wesley  appeared  on  the 
scene.  It  shocked  his  pride  of  family  that  his  brother 
should  marry  a  woman  who,  it  was  said,  had  been  a 
domestic  servant;  and  if  Grace  Murray  had  the  art  of 
fascinating  all  men,  this  was  attended,  as  is  usually  the 
case,  with  the  faculty  of  offending  most  of  her  own  sex. 
Her  inexpressible  tenderness  was  wasted  on  them !  They 
looked  on  her  with  icily  critical  eyes ;  and  Charles  Wesley 
had  poured  into  his  ears  many  tales  from  eager  feminine 
lips  injurious  to  his  brother's  intended  bride.  He  told 
his  brother  bluntly  that  all  their  preachers  would  leave 
them,  and  all  their  societies  disperse,  if  he  married 
Grace  Murray. 

Wesley  argued  the  case  out  with  his  brother  with  a 
philosophy  which  was  more  creditable  to  his  self-control 
as  a  man  than  to  his  ardour  as  a  lover.  He  was  a  logician 
even  when  in  love ;  his  affections  ran  in  syllogisms ;  and 
after  retailing  to  his  brother,  with  scientific  detail,  the 
merits  of  the  object  of  his  affections,  he  summed  up 
his  conclusions  under  two  heads:  "(i)  I  have  Scriptural 
reasons  to  marry ;  (2)  I  know  no  person  so  proper  as  this." 

Charles  departed,  having  first  kissed  the  intended  bride, 
and  saying,  "  Grace  Murray,  you  have  broken  my  heart." 
But  it  turned  out  that  Grace  Murray  had  occasion  at 
that  moment  to  go  to  Newcastle,  and  she  rode  behind 
Charles  to  that  place.  John  Bennet  was  there  awaiting 
their  arrival.  The  impressionable  Grace  Murray  fell  at 
the  feet  of  lover  No.  2,  acknowledged  she  had  used  him 
ill,  begged  his  forgiveness,  and  within  seven  days  the  pair 
were  married  ! 

A  lady,  we  repeat,  very  expeditious  in  her  affections. 
The  dates  condemn  her.  On  September  6  she  was 
urging  Wesley  to  marry  her  immediately,  and  vowing 
she  loved  him  only.  On  September  28  she  was  at  John 
Bennet's  feet,  entreating  his  forgiveness,  and  declaring  he 
was  the  sole  object  of  her  too  agile  regards. 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  463 

A  few  days  after  Charles  Wesley,  with  the  newly- 
married  pair,  came  to  John,  and  a  curious  scene  followed. 
Whitefield,  who  had  arrived  the  day  previously,  and  had 
wept  and  prayed  over  Wesley,  was  present.  According 
to  Tyerinan,  "  Charles,  with  characteristic  impetuosity, 
accosted  his  brother,  saying,  '  I  renounce  all  intercourse 
with  you,  but  what  I  would  have  with  a  heathen  man  or 
a  publican.'  Whitefield  and  John  Nelson  burst  into  tears  ; 
prayed,  cried,  and  entreated,  till  the  storm  passed  over. 
The  brothers,  unable  to  speak,  fell  on  each  other's  neck. 
John  Bennet  was  introduced ;  but  instead  of  upbraiding 
him,  Wesley  kissed  him.  Wesley  and  his  brother  had  a 
private  interview,  and,  on  hearing  explanations,  Charles 
was  utterly  amazed,  exonerated  him  from  blame,  and  de- 
clared that  all  the  culpability  was  hers."1 

Wesley  was,  no  doubt,  very  ill-used  in  this  whole  trans- 
action ;  ill-used  by  his  brother,  by  Bennet  his  helper, 
and  by  this  lady  of  such  very  changeable  moods.  But  it 
is  easier  to  forgive  those  who  have  wronged  us  than  those 
whom  we  have  wronged ;  and  Bennet,  within  nine  months 
of  the  marriage,  separated  from  Wesley  and  carried  off 
with  him  as  many  members  of  the  society  as  he  could 
influence. 

Four  days  after  the  marriage,  Wesley  wrote  to  a  friend 
quoting  afresh  the  verse  he  quoted  some  twelve  years 
before,  when  Miss  Hopkey  was  taken  from  him — "  Son  of 
man,  behold,  I  take  from  thee  the  desire  of  thine  eyes  at  a 
stroke ;  yet  shalt  thou  not  lament,  neither  shall  thy  tears 
run  down."  "  Yesterday,"  he  adds,  "  I  saw  my  friend  that 
was,  and  him  to  whom  she  is  sacrificed.  .  .  .  But  why 
should  a  living  man  complain,  a  man  for  the  punishment 
of  his  sins  ? " 

But  Wesley  was  not  a  man  to  nourish  resentment ;  and 
he  had  no  time  to  expend  in  regrets.  He  forgave  the 
woman  who  had  trifled  with  him,  and  the  friend  who  had 
outwitted  him,  and  the  day  after  the  interview  described 
he  started  on  a  preaching  tour.  It  was  nearly  forty  years 
before  Grace  Murray  and  John  Wesley  met  again.  He 
was  preaching  in  Moorfields,  and  she  sent  him  a  message, 
asking  him  to  visit  her.  He  went,  spent  a  few  brief 

1  Tjerman,  ii.  p.  53. 


464  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

moments  with  her,  and  was  never  afterwards  heard  to 
mention  her  name. 

Human  nature  is  compounded  of  many  elements: 
and  the  story  we  have  told  gives  only  one  side  of  Grace 
Murray's  character.  A  brief  life,  with  extracts  from  her 
diary,  published  by  her  son  after  her  death,  shows  her  to 
have  been  a  woman  capable  of  deep  religious  feeling,  and 
with  an  unusual  power  of  literary  expression.  There  is 
evidence,  too,  that  she  kept  a  place  in  the  regard  of  both 
the  Wesleys  after  her  marriage  with  Bennet,  and  the 
curious  history  which  preceded  it.  Two  months  after 
the  marriage,  in  a  letter  to  Bennet,  signed  "your  affec- 
tionate brother,"  dated  London,  December  7,  1749,  and 
never  before  published,  Wesley  says : — 

"  I  wrote  my  last  out  of  the  fulness  of  my  heart,  not  then  per- 
ceiving that  I  should  write  to  you  any  more.  I  do  not  care  to 
write  anything  fresh  on  that  subject.  Perhaps  I  may  some  time 
show  you  the  letter  I  designed  for  you  in  times  past.  I  do  not  see 
things  in  the  same  light  as  you  do  ;  but  I  complain  not.  For  I 
am  a  sinner  :  therefore  it  is  just  that  I  go  warily  all  my  days. 
Nay,  and  I  believe  it  is  best  for  me."  He  adds  a  significant 
postscript : — "  Poor  Grace  !  You  have  formerly  been  a  means  of 
many  blessings  to  me.  May  God  prepare  you  to  receive  all  His 
blessings  in  time  and  in  eternity." 

Many  months  later,  in  a  letter  to  Bennet,  dated  August 
10,  1750,  Charles  Wesley  says  :  "  My  heart  is  with  you  and 
yours ; "  and  then  he  too  sends  a  message  to  the  wife : 
"  Dear  Grace !  Fear  not !  In  six  troubles  the  Lord  has 
saved  you.  My  partner,"  he  adds, "  salutes  you  in  the  love 
that  never  faileth." 

Perhaps  the  best  defence  of  Grace  Murray  is  supplied 
by  John  Wesley  himself  in  "  A  Narrative  of  a  Remark- 
able Transaction  in  the  Early  Life  of  John  Wesley,  from 
an  Original  Manuscript  in  his  own  Handwriting,"  pub- 
lished in  1862.  Though  the  evidence  for  the  genuineness 
of  the  narrative  is  not  absolute,  yet  it  is  strong,  and  the 
story  as  thus  told  brings  out  vividly  that  deep  and  eager 
"tenderness"  of  Grace  Murray  which  was  at  once  her 
charm  and  her  weakness.  Wesley's  analysis  of  her  char- 
acter and  of  her  work  as  his  helper,  is  written  in  an  exalted 
key.  He  declares  he  "  never  met  or  heard  of  a  woman  so 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  465 

owned  of  God.  .  .  ."  His  love  for  Grace  Murray,  as  shown 
in  this  narrative,  is  a  slowly  kindling  fire,  but  it  becomes 
intense,  though  always  Wesley  remained  something  of  the 
pedant,  even  when  in  love.  The  key  to  Charles  Wesley's 
tiery  opposition  to  the  match  is  given  in  a  letter  headed 
"  My  dear  Sister  and  Friend,"  which  Charles  Wesley  wrote 
to  Grace  after  the  interview  in  which  he  said,  "  Grace 
Murray,  you  have  broken  my  heart."  In  this  letter  he 
writes  :  "  The  case  thus  appears  to  me  :  you  promised  J.  B. 
to  marry  him  ;  since  which  you  engage  yourself  to  another. 
How  is  this  possible,  and  who  is  this  other  ?  One  of  such 
importance,  that  his  doing  so  dishonest  an  action  would 
destroy  himself  and  me,  and  the  whole  work  of  God.  .  .  . 
What  a  scandal  had  you  brought  on  the  Gospel !  You 
would  have  lived  to  hear  your  name  cursed  by  God's 
people." 

John  Wesley,  according  to  this  view,  was  taking  from 
one  of  his  preachers  a  woman  who  was  his  pledged  wife. 
This  was  a  scandal  that  explains  Charles  Wesley's  abrupt 
words  to  his  brother,  "  I  renounce  all  communication 
with  you,  but  what  I  would  have  with  a  heathen  man 
or  publican."  "  I  felt  little  emotion,"  says  John  Wesley, 
telling  the  story,  "  it  was  only  adding  a  drop  of  water  to 
a  drowning  man,  while  I  calmly  accepted  his  renunciation 
and  acquiesced  therein." 

To  Grace  Murray  marriage  with  Wesley  was  thus 
described  as  a  crime,  which  would  destroy  his  work,  and 
she  was  told  that  Wesley  himself  had  realised  this  when 
she  left  him.  Then  the  harassed  and  distressed  soul 
declared  "  I  will  have  J.  Bennet,  if  he  will  have  me." 

Wesley  himself,  of  course,  believed  that  his  engagement 
to  Grace  Murray  was  of  an  older  date  and  better  autho- 
rity than  that  she  had  contracted  with  Bennet.  For  this 
strange  tangle  of  dates  and  engagements  Grace  Murray, 
with  her  too  eager  and  ready  "  tenderness,"  was  no  doubt 
responsible ;  but,  as  Wesley  himself  says,  "  those  who  know 
human  nature  will  pity  her  at  least  as  much  as  they  will 

T_I  i        »  r    j  J 

blame  her. 

Wesley's  narrative  adds  one  odd  incident.  After  Charles 
Wesley  had  carried  Grace  Murray  off  and  persuaded  her 
that  marriage  with  his  brother  would  be  a  crime,  there 
yet  remained  the  task  of  getting  Bennet  to  marry  her,  for 

2  G 


466  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

the  message  came  that "  he  would  now  have  nothing  to 
do  with  her."  Charles  Wesley  hereupon  left  poor  Grace 
with  some  friends,  two  miles  from  Newcastle,  and  rode 
forward  to  interview  Bennet.  The  way  he  soothed  his 
anger,  says  John  Wesley,  "  was  by  laying  all  the  blame 
upon  me,  as  having  used  all  my  art  and  authority  to 
seduce  another  man's  wife.  ...  It  was  then  that  Grace 
Murray  was  brought  to  him;  she  fell  at  his  feet  and 
begged  he  would  forgive  her.  To  satisfy  her  entirely  as 
to  any  scruple  that  might  remain,  one  was  brought  in  to 
assure  that  I  'had  given  her  up  and  would  have  nothing 
to  say  to  her."  Wesley  tells  the  story  of  the  interview 
with  Bennet  and  his  newly  wedded  wife  on  October  6th. 
"  Oh  !  what  an  interview,"  he  writes.  "  We  sat  weeping  at 
each  other.  I  asked, '  What  did  you  say  to  my  brother  to 
make  him  accost  me  thus  ? '  She  fell  at  my  feet,  and 
said  she  could  not  speak  against  me,  in  many  other  words 
to  the  same  effect,  in  the  midst  of  profound  sighs  and 
tears.  Before  she  arose  he  too  (Bennet)  fell  on  his  knees 
for  what  he  had  spoken  of  me.  Between  them  both  I 
knew  not  what  to  say  or  do.  I  can  forgive,  but  who  can 
redress  the  wrong  ? "  Wesley  ends  the  narrative  with  the 
words,  "  Hardly  has  such  a  case  been  from  the  beginning 
of  the  world." 

Within  eighteen  months  of  this  period  John  Wesley 
met  his  evil  fate,  and  married.  Charles  Wesley  first  met 
the  lady,  Mrs.  Vazeille,  at  his  friend  Perronet's,  and  de- 
scribes her  as  "  a  woman  of  sorrowful  spirit " ;  a  quality 
which,  later,  her  unfortunate  husband  was  to  discover, 
merely  meant  a  genius  for  making  herself  and  everybody 
about  her  miserable.  She  was  a  widow,  some  years 
younger  than  Wesley,  with  three  children,  and  a  decent 
income  settled  upon  them.  She  was,  in  her  own  un- 
comfortable fashion — at  this  stage,  at  least — a  religious 
woman,  with  some  capacity  for  making  herself  agreeable 
when  she  chose.  But  she  was  ignorant,  of  self-indulgent 
habits,  with  a  semi-lunatic  capacity  for  jealousy. 

John  Wesley  had  a  child-like  simplicity  in  all  matters 
relating  to  women.  He  never  allowed  for  sex.  He  looked 
on  every  woman  with  undiscerning  eyes,  and  took  her 
at  face  value.  Any  one  of  his  sisters  might  have  taught 
him  better.  They  would  have  seen  at  a  glance  that  Miss 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  467 

Sukey's  simple  dress,  and  pious  doubts,  and  zeal  as  a 
nurse  in  Georgia,  were  but  the'  arts  of  her  sex,  intended 
to  capture  this  young  and  earnest  Fellow  of  St.  John's, 
thrown  by  a  strange  chance  on  the  shores  of  Georgia. 
Grace  Murray's  "  inexpressible  tenderness "  and  Mrs. 
Vazeille's  "  sorrowful  spirit,"  in  like  manner,  would  have 
been  analysed,  discounted,  assessed. 

To  John  Wesley,  however,  every  woman  was  a  replica  of 
his  mother.  It  is  easy  to  smile  at  his  simplicity,  but  it 
had  a  generous  and  noble  root. 

Wesley  was  presently  introduced  by  his  brother  to  Mrs. 
Vazeille.  Events  moved  fast.  It  was  a  case  of  a  widow 
and  a  middle-aged  man  who  thought  he  ought  to  marry, 
but  was  too  busy  to  look  for  a  wife.  On  February  2, 
Charles  Wesley  writes :  "  My  brother  told  me  he  was 
resolved  to  marry."  That  John  should  follow  his  own 
example  seemed  to  Charles  nothing  less  than  a  disaster. 
"  I  was  thunderstruck,"  he  says. 

"Trusty  Ned  Perronet  followed,  and  told  me,  the  person  was 
Mrs.  Vazeille !  One  of  whom  I  had  never  had  the  least  suspicion. 
I  refused  his  company  to  the  chapel,  and  retired  to  mourn  with 
my  faithful  Sally.  I  groaned  all  the  day,  and  several  following 
ones,  under  my  own  and  the  people's  burdens.  I  could  eat  no 
pleasant  food,  nor  preach,  nor  rest,  either  by  night  or  by  day." 1 

Wesley,  this  time,  was  not  in  the  least  anxious  to 
consult  his  friends,  or  take  the  opinion  of  his  societies 
and  ask  their  prayers.  Least  of  all  was  he  disposed  to 
consult  his  brother  Charles.  His  interference  had  spoilt 
one  marriage ;  John  would  give  him  no  chance  of  spoil- 
ing a  second.  But  a  curious  incident  followed.  He 
records : — 

"Met  the  single  men  of  the  London  society,  and  showed  them 
on  how  many  accounts  it  was  good  for  those  who  had  received 
that  gift  from  God,  to  remain  '  single  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven's 
sake,'  unless  where  a  particular  case  might  be  an  exception  to  the 
general  rule." 

This  spectacle  of  John  Wesley  some  ten  days  before  his 
own  marriage  explaining  the  superiority  of  the  unmarried 

1  Tyerman,  ii.  p.  104. 


468  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

condition  to  one  of  his  societies,  is  really  very  puzzling. 
Through  the  loophole  of  this  phrase — "  a  particular  case  " 
— Wesley  himself  was  at  that  moment  about  to  escape 
from  the  celibacy  he  recommended  to  others! 

Wesley  had  been  as  near  to  marriage  before  without 
reaching  that  goal,  and  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
Mrs.  Vazeille  would  have  become  Mrs.  John  Wesley  but 
for  one  trifling  accident.  Wesley  was  about  to  set  out  on 
his  northern  tour,  in  which  it  is  probable  he  would  have 
quite  forgotten  Mrs.  Vazeille;  but  at  this  point  an 
accident  precipitated  matters.  It  was  a  bitter  frost,  and 
Wesley,  crossing  London  Bridge,  slipped  on  the  ice  and 
injured  his  ankle  severely.  He  tried  with  invincible 
courage  to  preach,  but  could  not,  and  was  taken  to 
Threadneedle  Street,  where  Mrs.  Vazeille  resided,  and  was 
nursed  by  that  lady.  This  was  fatal !  Seven  days  were 
spent,  partly  in  the  task  of  writing  a  Hebrew  grammar, 
and  composing  a  set  of  lessons  for  children,  and  partly 
in  "  conversation  with  Mrs.  Vazeille,"  and  the  business  of 
being  nursed  by  her. 

The  accident  occurred  on  February  10.  On  February  17 
he  was  carried  to  the  Foundry,  and  preached  kneeling, 
not  being  able  to  stand.  The  next  day,  while  he  was  still 
a  cripple,  he  married  Mrs.  Vazeille.  He  preached  again — 
indomitable  man  ! — still  in  kneeling  attitude,  on  Tuesday 
evening,  and  on  Wednesday  morning;  and  a  fortnight 
after  his  marriage,  being  able  to  climb  into  his  saddle,  he 
rode  off  on  a  preaching  tour. 

Wesley's  wife  lived  till  1781,  and  for  those  thirty  years 
she  was  for  her  unfortunate  husband  an  embodied  and 
ceaseless  torment.  She  accompanied  him  at  first  in  his 
preaching  tours,  but  her  genius  for  being  discontented, 
and  for  quarrelling  with  everybody  about  her,  brought 
this  to  an  end.  Within  a  month  of  the  marriage  the 
favourite  topic  for  this  remarkable  wife  was  her  great 
husband's  faults.  Within  a  year  the  breach  was  open, 
confessed,  incurable. 

Wesley  was,  no  doubt,  a  somewhat  trying  husband.  His 
character  and  habits  were  settled ;  he  was  incessantly 
travelling ;  his  life  had  in  it  absolutely  no  privacy.  The 
wife  who  married  Wesley  might  well  have  felt  as  though 
she  were  fastened  to  the  tail  of  a  comet.  Yet  Wesley  was 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  469 

a  man  of  invincible  patience,  of  kindness  without  limit ; 
and  he  had  in  him  depths  of  feeling  which  a  true  woman 
might  easily  have  evoked.  But  his  wife  was  nothing 
better  than  a  human  gad-fly.  Her  business  in  existence 
was  to  sting. 

Charles  Wesley,  with  a  touch  of  unconscious  humour, 
gives  us  a  hint  of  this  termagant's  capacity  for  quarrelling. 
"  I  called,"  he  says,  "  two  minutes  before  preaching,  on 
Mrs.  Wesley  at  the  Foundry,  and  in  all  that  time  we  had 
not  one  quarrel."  Charles,  indeed,  took  his  brother's  wife, 
with  her  furies,  half  humorously.  He  was  accustomed  to 
call  her  "  My  Best  Friend,"  because  she  told  him  his  faults 
with  greater  diligence  and  emphasis  than  any  other  human 
being.  Charles  was  once,  however,  for  a  moment  pricked 
out  of  his  philosophy.  This  scold  was  accustomed  to  ac- 
cuse him  of  idleness ;  but  in  a  more  malignant  fit  of  temper 
than  usual,  she  declared  that  for  years  his  dearest  Sally 
had  been  his  brother's  mistress !  Charles  fairly  danced 
with  rage  at  this  slander  on  his  wife,  who,  on  her  part, 
with  her  serene  and  invincible  good  sense,  simply  smiled 
and  said,  "  Who  will  believe  my  sister  now  ? " 

Jealousy  is,  perhaps,  the  most  malignant  and  torment- 
ing of  all  human  passions.  When  inflamed,  it  is  simply  a 
mood  of  lunacy.  And  Mrs.  Wesley  was  furiously  jealous 
of  her  husband.  His  work  set  him  in  the  relation  of  friend 
and  counsellor  to  many  women ;  amongst  his  helpers,  too, 
and  in  the  institutions  that  were  springing  up  under  his 
care,  women  were  employed  ;  and  each  one  was,  for  his  half- 
insane  wife,  an  object  of  deadly  suspicion.  Wesley,  on  his 
side,  was  apt  to  be  tolerant,  in  a  masculine,  large-minded 
way,  of  facts  in  relation  to  such  women  Avhich  other  women 
— even  the  best — would  hardly  forgive.  Sarah  Ryan,  for 
example,  the  housekeeper  at  one  of  his  Orphanages,  was  a 
woman  with  "a  past."  She  was  at  this  time  only  thirty- 
three  ;  but  she  had  three  husbands  living,  and  was  separated 
from  them  all !  Wesley  was  in  constant  correspondence 
with  her,  a  fact  which  kindled  his  wife  to  fury.  She 
stole  Wesley's  correspondence  to  satisfy  her  doubts.;  she 
would  travel  a  hundred  miles  to  see  who  were  his  com- 
panions at  a  particular  stage  of  his  preaching  tour.  Her 
lury  threw  her  sometimes  into  paroxysms  of  mad  violence, 
and  sometimes  into  acts  of  almost  incredible  treachery. 


470  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

She  not  only  stole  her  husband's  letters;  she  tampered 
with  them,  so  as  to  give  them  an  evil  sense,  and  put  them 
into  the  hands  of  his  enemies  to  be  published. 

Wesley  did  not  show  much  tact  in  dealing  with  his  wife. 
He  solemnly,  and  at  infinite  length,  argued  with  her ;  as 
though  a  woman,  who,  like  Tennyson's  "life,"  was  "a  fury 
slinging  flames,"  was  likely  to  be  cured  by  syllogisms ! 
Queen  Victoria  once  complained  that  Mr.  Gladstone  used 
to  address  her  as  though  she  were  a  public  meeting.  Now 
John  Wesley  sometimes  wrote  to  his  wife  as  though  she 
had  been  a  crowd  at  Moorfields  or  Kingswood.  Here  is 
an  example: — 

"At  length,  know  me,  and  know  yourself.  Your  enetny  I  can- 
not be  ;  but  let  me  be  your  friend.  Suspect  me  no  more,  asperse 
me  no  more,  provoke  me  no  more.  Do  not  any  longer  contend  for 
mastery,  for  power,  money,  or  praise.  Be  content  to  be  a  private, 
insignificant  person,  known  and  loved  by  God  and  me.  Attempt 
no  more  to  abridge  me  of  my  liberty,  which  I  claim  by  the  laws 
of  God  and  man.  Leave  me  to  be  governed  by  God  and  my  own 
conscience.  Then  shall  I  govern  you  with  gentle  sway,  and  show 
that  I  do  indeed  love  you  even  as  Christ  the  Church.'' 

Here  is  another  of  Wesley's  remonstrances  as  a  husband  : 

"  It  might  be  an  unspeakable  blessing,  that  you  have  a  husband 
who  knows  your  temper  and  can  bear  with  it ;  who,  after  you  have 
tried  him  numberless  ways,  laid  to  his  charge  things  that  he  knew 
not,  robbed  him,  betrayed  his  confidence,  revealed  his  secrets, 
given  him  a  thousand  treacherous  wounds,  purposely  aspersed  and 
murdered  his  character,  and  made  it  your  business  so  to  do,  under 
the  poor  pretence  of  vindicating  your  own  character — who,  I  say, 
after  all  these  provocations,  is  still  willing  to  forgive  you  all,  to 
overlook  what  is  past,  as  if  it  had  not  been,  and  to  receive  you 
with  open  arms ;  only  not  while  you  have  a  sword  in  your  hand." 

On  June  23,  1771,  there  appears  the  famous  entry  in 
Wesley's  Journal :  "  For  what  cause  I  know  not,  my  wife 
set  out  for  Newcastle,  purposing,  '  never  to  return.'  Non 
earn  reliqui  :  non  dimisi :  non  revocabo." 

It  is  generallysupposed  that  this  non  revocabo  was  final, 
and  that  from  this  date  Wesley's  relations  with  his  wife 
ceased ;  but  this  is  by  no  means  the  case.  The  next  year 
his  wife,  for  a  brief  space  of  time  at  least,  was  with  him 


WESLEY'S  LOVE  AFFAIRS  471 

again,  but  once  more  disappeared  beyond  the  horizon  in  a 
whirlwind  of  passion.  Wesley  did  not  call  her  back,  she 
came  back  uninvited.  In  a  letter  dated  May  31,  1774,  a 
letter  which  is  one  long  scold,  she  signs  herself  "  your 
affectionate  wife."  They  were  finally  parted,  however, 
during  the  later  years  of  her  life.  One  of  the  last  words 
Wesley  wrote  to  his  wife  was  in  1778  :  "  If  you  were  to  live 
a  thousand  years,  you  could  not  undo  the  mischief  you 
have  done ;  and  until  you  have  done  all  you  can  towards 
it,  I  bid  you  farewell."  Wesley  records  in  his  Journal : 
"On  October  12,  1781,  I  came  to  London  and  was  in- 
formed that  my  wife  died  on  Monday." 

Wesley's  strange  marriage  experiment  is  the  tragedy  of 
his  life.  The  woman  he  chose,  to  quote  Southey, "  deserves 
to  be  classed  in  a  triad  with  Xantippe  and  the  wife  of  Job 
as  one  of  the  three  typical  bad  wives  of  the  world."  How 
did  so  wise  and  great  a  man  come  to  make  so  unhappy  a 
choice  ?  But  if  any  proof  is  needed  of  the  heroic  fibre  of 
Wesley's  character,  it  is  found  in  the  circumstance  that, 
while  afflicted  with  a  mere  human  plague  in  petticoats 
like  this,  it  never  deflected  by  a  hair's-breadth  the  work  of 
his  life.  It  did  not  even  cloud  his  cheerfulness !  The  hus- 
band of  this  virago  was  yet  able  to  declare  that  "  he  had 
never  suffered  from  lowness  of  spirits  for  a  quarter  of  an 
hour."  Any  ordinary  man,  under  such  an  affliction,  would 
have  known  little  else  than  lowness  of  spirits.  Perhaps 
the  unconquerable  serenity  of  Wesley's  temper  was  an  un- 
acknowledged irritation  to  his  wife.  It  was  a  challenge  to 
her  gift  for  making  everybody  about  her  miserable. 

But  it  is  almost  amusing  to  note  how  the  alchemy  of  his 
cheerful  faith  in  the  end  turned  even  Wesley's  scolding 
wife  into  a  force  for  good.  He  told  Moore,  one  of  his 
assistants,  afterwards,  "  if  Mrs.  Wesley  had  been  a  better 
wife,  he  might  have  been  unfaithful  inl  the  great  work  to 
which  God  had  called  him,  and  might  have  too  much 
sought  to  please  her  according  to  her  own  views."  This 
same  view  is  put  with  humorous  directness  by  John 
Hampson :  "  Marriage  has  sadly  crippled  Charles  Wesley," 
he  wrote  to  Berridge  of  Everton,  "and  would  have  done 
the  same  by  John  and  George  (Whitefield)  if  God  had 
not  sent  them  a  brace  of  ferrets  ! " 

Whitefield,  it  is  to  be  noted,  had  a  marital  experience 


472  WESLEY  AND  HIS  CENTURY 

not  much  happier  than  that  of  his  great  comrade,  and  he 
deserved  his  fate.  In  the  letter  to  the  parents  of  the 
lady  he  wished  to  make  his  wife,  conveying  his  proposal 
of  marriage,  he  explains  that  he  wants  a  mistress  for  his 
orphanage,  and  adds,  "  You  need  not  be  afraid  to  send  me 
a  refusal,  for  I  bless  God,  if  I  know  anything  of  my  own 
heart,  I  am  free  from  that  foolish  passion  the  world  calls 
love."  A  suitor  so  frigid  deserved  a  shrew  for  his  bride. 


CHAPTER  III 

WESLEY   IN    LITERATURE 

IT  might  have  seemed,  in  advance,  impossible  that  Wesley 
could  have  filled  any  serious  place  in  literature.  What 
time  had  a  man,  whose  study  was  the  saddle,  who  tra- 
velled 5000  miles,  and  preached  500  sermons  every  year, 
for  reading  books;  still  less  for  writing  or  publishing 
them? 

It  may  be  admitted  that  Wesley  approached  literature 
with  less  of  what  may  be  called  the  literary  spirit  than 
perhaps  any  other  man  who  ever  published  so  many 
books.  Literature,  for  him,  was  not  an  end  in  itself;  it 
was  not  a  recreation ;  it  was  not  a  means  of  winning  either 
money  or  fame.  It  was  a  weapon,  caught  up  for  a 
moment  in  the  heat  of  a  fight,  and  used  like  a  weapon — 
so  long  as  the  fight  lasted.  It  was  a  tool,  seized  for  the 
purpose  of  doing  a  bit  of  urgent  work,  and  to  be  cast  down 
like  a  tool,  when  the  work  was  done.  He  was  a  man  in 
haste,  and  the  note  of  haste — or,  at  least,  of  urgency- 
runs  through  the  whole  of  his  literary  work.  He  writes 
always  like  a  man  who  has  other,  and  better,  work  to  do. 
But  some  controversy  has  arisen.  It  is,  for  Wesley,  an 
interruption,  perhaps  even  an  exasperation ;  but  it  has 
to  be  dealt  with,  lest  truth  should  suffer,  and  souls  be 
wronged.  He  deals  with  it  in  the  fewest  words,  and 
the  shortest  possible  way,  and  then  hastens  on  his  road. 
Every  sentence  he  writes  is,  in  a  sense,  compelled ;  and 
the  compulsion  is  always  moral. 

Wesley's  writings  may  be  divided  into  four  classes. 
Sometimes  they  are,  like  his  sermons,  appeals  addressed 
to  the  human  conscience,  and  intended  to  turn  men  from 
sin  to  righteousness.  Wesley  was  the  first  discoverer  of 
that  much  criticised  form  of  literature,  the  "  tract,"  and 
he  anticipated  the  famous  Religious  Tract  Society  by 
many  years.  That  society  was  organised  in  1799;  but, 

473 


474  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

more  than  fifty  years  earlier — in  1742 — Wesley  was  busy 
printing  and  circulating  thousands  of  brief,  pungent 
appeals  to  various  classes  of  wrongdoers :  to  drunkards, 
to  swearers,  to  Sabbath-breakers,  &c.  By  means  of  his 
helpers,  Wesley  scattered  these  earliest  of  tracts  like  seed 
over  the  soil  of  the  three  kingdoms. 

Next  come  his  controversial  writings.  Round  Wesley's 
person,  his  teaching,  his  societies,  his  helpers,  gathered 
a  whirling  and  perpetual  simoom  of  controversy.  He 
troubled  too  many  consciences,  violated  too  many  con- 
ventions, and  stung  with  rebuke  too  many  prejudices,  to 
be  left  in  peace.  Now,  Wesley  was,  both  by  gift  of  nature 
and  by  force  of  training,  one  of  the  most  formidable 
controversialists  that  ever  lived.  He  did  not,  like  Dr. 
Johnson,  wield  a  cudgel  or  a  quarter-staff.  His  logic  had 
the  point,  the  shining  gleam,  the  deadly  swiftness  of  a 
rapier.  But  he  hated  controversy.  He  was  accustomed 
to  quote  an  ancient  saying,  "  God  made  practical  divinity 
necessary,  the  devil  controversial."  And  yet  when  truth  is 
assailed,  those  who  love  truth  must  defend  it.  And  when 
Wesley  saw  the  great  and  essential  doctrines  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  doctrines  by  which  men  must  be  saved, 
attacked — and  attacked  too  often  by  those  who  ought  to 
have  been  their  defenders — he  felt '  like  a  soldier  who 
sees  the  flag  of  his  regiment  surrounded  by  enemies.  He 
must  fight ! 

"  Oh,  that  I  might  dispute  with  no  man ! "  he  writes. 
"  But  if  I  must  dispute,"  he  adds,  "  let  it  be  with  men  of 
sense."  But,  alas !  Wesley's  opponents  were  not  often  men 
of  sense.  One  of  the  most  formidable  of  them,  and  one 
whom  Wesley  smote  hardest,  was  Dr.  Lavington,  Bishop 
of  Exeter;  and  of  him  even  a  critic  so  tolerant,  and  so 
detached,  as  Miss  Wedgwood,  declares  in  words  already 
quoted :  "  He  deserves  to  be  coupled  with  the  men  who 
flung  dead  cats  and  rotten  eggs  at  the  Methodists,  not  with 
those  who  assailed  their  tenets  with  arguments." 

Another  section  of  Wesley's  works  represents  his  con- 
cern for  the  instruction  of  his  own  people.  Himself  a 
scholar,  nurtured  from  his  very  childhood  in  an  intel- 
lectual atmosphere,  the  Fellow  of  an  historic  University, 
hate  of  ignorance  was,  for  him,  an  instinct  and  a  passion. 
Knowledge  and  faith,  he  held,  had  the  closest  kinship. 


WESLEY    IN    LITERATURE  475 

No  member  of  his  societies  must  be  allowed  to  remain 
untaught.  And  Wesley  deliberately  set  himself  to  bring 
within  the  reach  of  his  people  the  best  literature  the  world 
at  that  day  possessed.  He  anticipated  by  more  than  a 
century,  that  is,  the  age  of  cheap  books  and  of  popular 
literature.  His  "  Christian  Library  "  represents  his  most 
ambitious  attempt  in  this  field.  He  abridged  some  fifty 
famous  books  for  this  purpose,  and  the  library  is  a  monu- 
ment to  his  breadth  of  spirit.  Ancient  fathers  of  the 
early  Church,  the  greatest  Anglican  divines,  the  most 
famous  English  Nonconformists,  as  well  as  foreign  writers 
like  Pascal  and  Bengel,  are  found  side  by  side  in  the  list. 

The  Christian  Library  was  not  a  financial  success;  it 
involved  Wesley,  indeed,  in  serious  loss ;  a  loss,  however, 
which  he  made  up  by  the  gains  on  his  cheap  books. 
"  Two  and  forty  years  ago,"  he  writes,  "  having  a  desire  to 
furnish  poor  people  with  cheaper,  shorter,  and  plainer 
books  than  any  I  had  seen,  I  wrote  many  small  tracts, 
generally  a  penny  a  piece.  Some  of  these  had  such  a 
sale  as  I  never  thought  of,  and  by  this  means  I  unawares 
became  rich."  Wesley,  in  a  word,  made  the  discovery— 
which  explains  some  vast  modern  fortunes — that  litera- 
ture, when  it  becomes  democratic,  and  takes  root  amongst 
the  masses,  is  better  than  a  gold-mine.  Wesley's  "  riches," 
however,  were  on  a  modest  scale.  His  receipts  from  his 
books  seldom  rose  to  £1000  a  year,  and  every  penny  was 
made  the  servant  of  some  unselfish  object.  "  If  I  die 
leaving,  after  my  debts  are  paid,  more  than  £10,"  he  once 
wrote,  "you  may  call  me  a  thief." 

His  anxiety  to  provide  an  adequate  literature  for  his 
own  people  explains  Wesley's  printed  Sermons,  and  his 
Notes  on  the  New  Testament.  He  found,  at  an  early 
stage  of  his  work,  that  for  the  use  of  his  helpers  some 
clear,  simple,  and  definite  statement  of  what  may  be 
called  the  theology  of  the  Revival  was  needed ;  and  to 
meet  this  want  he  published  the  first  series  of  his  sermons 
— fifty-three  discourses,  that  still  remain  the  doctrinal 
standard  of  his  Church.  These  sermons  are  not  the 
discourses  actually  preached,  but  only  their  doctrinal 
framework — a  condensed  statement  of  their  theology. 
Wesley  says  his  purpose  in  writing  these  sermons  was 
"  to  furnish  plain  truth  for  plain  people."  In  writing 


476  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

them,  he  had  beside  him  only  two  books,  the  Hebrew 
Bible  and  the  Greek  Testament ;  and  he  explains  in  the 
preface,  "  My  design  is  in  some  sense  to  forget  all  that 
I  have  ever  read  in  my  life."  His  aim,  that  is,  was  to 
state  the  great  doctrines  of  evangelical  Christianity  in 
the  freshest,  the  most  direct,  and  untechnical  language 
possible. 

Wesley  published,  in  all,  five  series  of  sermons,  and 
they  had  an  immense  sale.  But  no  one  need  turn  to 
these  sermons  to-day  to  find  in  them  the  secret  of  Wesley's 
own  power  in  the  pulpit,  or  any  echoes  of  the  thrilling 
speech  which  day  after  day  held  vast  open-air  crowds 
breathless  with  interest  and  emotion.  They  resemble 
the  spoken  sermons  only  as  fossils  resemble  their  living 
originals. 

Wesley's  Notes  on  the  New  Testament  were  meant,  like 
his  sermons,  to  be  a  manual  of  divinity  for  his  people. 
The  notes  were  written  at  tremendous  speed,  and  while 
Wesley  was  temporarily  forbidden  to  preach,  on  account 
of  sickness.  The  new  translation  of  the  text  which 
accompanies  the  Notes  has  in  it  many  curious  anticipa- 
tions of  the  readings  adopted  by  the  revisers  of  1870. 

A  record  of  the  various  incidents  of  his  career  forms 
another  section  of  Wesley's  works.  The  famous  Journal 
belongs  to  this  class,  as  does  the  Arminian  Magazine 
started  in  1778.  Wesley  gave  to  human  experience — to 
spiritual  phenomena  of  every  kind — an  evidential  value 
which  science,  only  late,  and  reluctantly,  has  begun  to 
recognise;  and  his  Journal  and  Magazine  are  the  most 
complete,  detailed,  and  scientific  records  of  such  pheno- 
mena in  literature. 

Wesley's  publications  number  371,  including  30  works 
prepared  in  conjunction  with  his  brother  Charles ;  and  as 
he  only  began  to  publish  in  1733,  th*8  represents  an 
average  of  more  than  seven  volumes  for  each  year  of  his 
busy  life.  A  German  historian,  in  solemn,  heavy-handed 
fashion,  groups  Wesley's  works  in  five  divisions — Poetical, 
Philological,  Philosophical,  Historical,  and  Theological. 
And  they  certainly  cover  an  enormous  range  of  subjects, 
ranging  from  school-books  for  Kingswood,  hymn-books 
for  his  societies,  abridgments  of  countless  authors  for  his 
people  generally  and  theological  standards  for  his  helpers, 


WESLEY    IN    LITERATURE  477 

down  to  a  whole  battery  of  controversial  pamphlets  and 
treatises. 

But  do  Wesley's  works  belong  to  literature  in  its  best 
sense  ?  Does  he  possess  that  great  anti-septic,  style  ? 
Wesley  himself  would  reply,  with  emphasis,  "  No."  He 
was  no  hunter  after  pretty  phrases.  He  secretes  no 
epigrams.  He  betrays  no  sense  of  the  music  and  grace 
of  words.  A  white  light,  hard  and  clear,  beats  on  every 
page;  but  there  are  none  of  the  subtle  colour-effects  of 
the  imagination.  Wesley's  literary  ideal  consisted  of 
short  words,  short  sentences,  and  clear  thinking.  Of  his 
own  literary  style  he  writes,  in  1788,  with  honest  direct- 
ness: "I  dare  no  more  write  in  a  fine  style  than  wear 
a  fine  coat.  A  man  with  one  foot  in  the  grave  must 
waste  no  time  on  ornament.  But  were  it  otherwise,  had 
I  time  to  spare,  I  should  still  write  just  as  I  do.  I  should 
purposely  decline  what  many  admire — a  highly  orna- 
mented style.  I  cannot  admire  French  oratory ;  I  despise 
it  from  my  heart." 

He  was  an  old  man  when  he  wrote  that  self-descrip- 
tion. But  a  quarter  of  a  century  earlier  (in  1764)  he  had 
written : — 

"  As  for  me,  I  never  think  of  my  style  at  all ;  but  just  set  down 
the  words  that  come  first.  Only,  when  I  transcribe  anything  for 
the  press,  then  I  think  it  my  duty  to  see  every  phrase  be  clear, 
pure,  and  proper.  Conciseness  (which  is  now,  as  it  were,  natural 
to  me)  brings  quantum  sufficit  of  strength.  If,  after  all,  I  observe 
any  stiff  expression,  I  throw  it  out,  neck  and  shoulders.  Clear- 
ness, in  particular,  is  necessary  for  you  and  me ;  because  we  are 
to  instruct  people  of  the  lowest  understanding." 

Leslie  Stephen's  criticism  of  Wesley's  writings  is  inter- 
esting, if  only  as  an  illustration  of  Stephen's  own  limita- 
tions as  a  critic.  He  cannot  judge  Wesley  fairly  because 
he  is  parted  from  him  by  so  wide  a  theological  interval. 
When  he  is  fresh  from  reading  Wesley  ho  says : — 

"  He  shows  remarkable  literary  power.  His  writings  are  means 
to  a  direct  practical  end.  ...  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  any 
letters  more  direct,  forcible,  and  pithy  in  expression.  He  goes 
straight  to  the  mark  without  one  superfluous  flourish.  He  writes 
as  a  man  confined  within  the  narrowest  limits  of  time  and  space, 


478  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

whose  thoughts  are  so  well  in  hand  that  he  can  say  everything 
needful  within  those  limits.  The  compression  gives  emphasis  and 
never  causes  confusion." 

These,  surely,  are  literary  qualities  of  great  value  for 
their  own  sake,  as  well  as  reflecting  a  very  fine  moral 
temper.  But  presently  Leslie  Stephen  forgets  what  he 
has  written;  he  remembers  only  his  dislike  of  Wesley's 
theology,  and  he  says,  "Wesley's  thoughts  run  so  fre- 
quently in  the  grooves  of  obsolete  theological  specula- 
tion, that  he  has  succeeded  in  producing  no  single  book 
satisfactory  in  a  literary  sense."  How  can  writings  be 
at  once  "means  to  a  direct  and  practical  end"  and  yet 
run  almost  exclusively  in  "  the  grooves  of  obsolete  theo- 
logical speculation  "  ? 

The  truth  is,  Wesley  has  suffered,  as  far  as  his  literary 
fame  is  concerned,  much  injustice  at  the  hands  alike  of 
his  critics  and  of  his  admirers.  He  has  been  both  under- 
estimated and  over-praised ;  or  rather,  he  has  been  praised 
at  the  wrong  point.  His  second  best  work,  the  famous 
Journal,  has  somehow  shut  out  of  sight  work  of  much 
finer  literary  quality.  Leslie  Stephen,  as  we  have  seen, 
says  that  Wesley  "never  produced  a  single  book  satis- 
factory in  a  literary  sense,"  and  even  Mr.  Augustine 
Birrell,  who  has  written  one  of  the  most  charming  of 
essays  on  Wesley's  Journal,  says  that  as  a  writer  Wesley 
"  has  not  achieved  distinction." 

But  a  hundred  critics  may  be  arrayed  on  the  other  side. 
Mr.  FitzGerald,  of  "  Omar  Khayyam  "  fame,  for  example, 
who  has  a  poet's  sense  of  distinction  and  charm  in  style, 
dwells  with  delight  on  the  "  pure,  unaffected,  undying 
English"  of  Wesley's  Journal.  Leslie  Stephen  himself 
has  to  admit  that  Wesley's  English  is  "  allied  to  that  of 
Swift  or  Arbuthnot,"  and  that  his  Journal  "only  wants 
a  little  humour  to  be  one  of  the  most  entertaining  volumes 
ever  written." 

Now  the  charm  of  the  famous  Journal  is,  no  doubt,  very 
great.  The  original  records  exist  in  the  shape  of  twenty- 
one  neat,  closely  written  volumes,  from  which  extracts  only 
have  been  printed.  The  first  entry  in  the  Journal  is  dated 
October  14,  1735,  and  consists  of  a  letter  of  stupendous 
length  which  Wesley  wrote  defending  the  little  society  of 


.4  por<76  /rom  Jbfeti  Wesky's  Journal  in  Georgia. 


WESLEY    IN    LITERATURE  479 

Methodists  at  Oxford  from  the  charge  of  having  helped  to 
kill  one  of  their  own  number  by  their  excessive  austerity 
of  life.  The  last  entry  is  dated  October  24,  1790.  The 
Journal,  therefore,  covers  a  period  of  fifty-four  years. 
And  betwixt  those  two  Octobers,  to  quote  Mr.  Augustine 
Birrell,  lies  "  the  most  amazing  record  of  human  exertion 
ever  penned  or  endured." 

No  one  will  deny  the  value  of  the  Journal ;  yet  probably 
nobody  could  read  it  through  continuously.  Mr.  Birrell 
says  "  an  atmosphere  of  tremendous  activity  fills  it " ; 
but  this  is  hardly  true.  The  notes  are  too  cold  and  brief. 
No  wind  blows  through  the  Journal ;  no  sense  of  space 
stirs  in  it.  Only  by  an  effort  of  deliberate  recollection 
does  the  reader  succeed  in  realising  that  beneath  the  cool 
and  quiet  syllables  there  burns  a  flame  of  sustained  effort 
almost  without  parallel. 

In  his  Journal  Wesley  records  in  the  briefest  fashion 
the  general  course  of  his  work  and  life.  He  preaches 
at  such  a  place ;  the  text  is  given,  the  result  of  the  service 
is  condensed  into  a  sentence,  there  is  a  pious  aspiration 
for  a  blessing  upon  it.  Then  Wesley  hurries  on  his  way 
to  another  service.  There  is  no  perspective  in  the  Journal ; 
no  clear  background.  It  gives  no  sense  of  the  life,  so 
crowded  and  vivid  and  strenuous,  of  which  it  is  a  partial 
record.  No  echo  of  the  great  events  in  politics,  literature, 
and  social  life  taking  place  concurrently  with  the  events 
it  records  runs  through  it.  This,  indeed — its  almost  com- 
plete detachment  from  the  general  life  of  its  own  times — 
is  the  great  literary  defect  of  the  Journal.  The  eighteenth 
century,  it  must  be  remembered,  resounds  with  tumult; 
it  is  crowded  with  great  events.  It  begins  with  the 
thunders  of  Blenheim  and  ends  with  those  of  the  Nile. 
Wesley  himself  was  contemporary  with  four  great  wars — 
the  war  of  the  Austrian  Succession  (1740-1748),  the  Seven 
Years'  War  (1755-1763),  the  war  of  American  Indepen- 
dence (1775-1783),  and  the  first  half  of  the  Great  War 
with  France  (1793-1803).  England  was  at  war  for  thirty 
years  out  of  the  last  sixty  years  of  the  century.  In  addi- 
tion, there  was  the  Jacobite  rising  of  1715,  and  the  still 
more  famous  rising  of  1745,  with  its  chain  of  bloody 
fights  ranging  from  Prestonpans  to  Culloden. 

Wesley,   too,   saw   Clive   win   India   for  England,   and 


480  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

Wolfe  win  Canada.  He  saw  Captain  Cook  open  for  her, 
not  any  "  perilous  seas  forlorn,"  such  as  Keats  describes, 
but  the  majestic,  many-isled  world  of  the  great  Pacific ; 
and  he  saw  George  Washington  take  from  her  the  thirteen 
colonies.  Wesley  was  the  contemporary  of  the  two  Pitts, 
of  Wilkes,  of  Junius.  The  effervescence  of  the  South 
Sea  Bubble  was  round  his  youth,  and  the  tumult  of 
the  Lord  George  Gordon  riots  about  his  old  age.  Voltaire 
visited  England  in  1726-1729  when  Wesley  was  at  Oxford. 
He  saw  across  the  narrow  seas  the  opening  of  the  mighty 
drama  of  the  Revolution  in  France.  The  Whiteboys  were 
filling  Ireland  with  terror  in  the  very  years  Wesley  was 
traversing  Ireland  as  an  evangelist. 

And  while  such  great  events  as  these  were  filling  the 
world  with  their  tumult,  Wesley,  it  must  be  remembered, 
was  beyond  all  his  contemporaries  in  contact  with  people 
of  every  class ;  he  knew  the  common  mind  intimately, 
with  all  its  ebb  and  flow  of  terror,  rage,  excitement.  It 
is  surely  very  remarkable,  and  argues  a  curious  detach- 
ment or  mind,  or  an  intense  preoccupation  with  greater 
interests,  that  his  Journal  contains  such  scanty  refer- 
ences to  these  events.  No  vibration  of  the  agitations 
or  passion  of  the  moment  runs  through  its  swift,  but 
ordered,  syllables.  No  one  else  of  that  generation,  it  is 
certain,  could  have  lived  so  constantly  amongst  the 
crowds,  and  so  completely  escaped  the  contagion  of  their 
emotions.  No  one  else  could  have  written  a  journal  of 
daily  events  so  minute  and  full,  yet  so  completely  divorced 
from  the  tumult  of  battles,  the  passion  of  party  strife,  the 
dust  of  contemporary  events. 

Yet  the  interest  of  the  book,  in  spite  of  all  this,  is  vivid 
and  great.  It  abounds  in  curious  incidents,  in  pungent 
literary  judgments,  in  sudden  pictures  of  odd  characters, 
in  records  of  odd  events.  It  gives  us  gleams  of  curious 
light  into  the  dark  places  of  human  life  and  character. 
For  Wesley  was  dealing  with  men  and  women  in  high 
moods  of  feeling,  and  saw  aspects  of  human  character 
usually  hidden  from  sight,  and  sometimes  even  from 
consciousness.  Wesley  believed  in  Providence  as  a  force 
in  human  affairs,  and  delights  to  give  instances  of  its 
working.  Human  experience  was  for  him  a  phenomenon 
to  be  treated  with  respect,  and  recorded  with  diligence. 


WESLEY    IN    LITERATURE  481 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Journal  supplies  many 
proofs  of  the  credulousness  of  Wesley,  but  that  is  not 
quite  just.  He  notes  all  the  strange  phenomena  that 
come  under  his  observation,  but  his  temper  about  them 
is  almost  scientific,  not  to  say  modern.  He  does  not 
dismiss  a  strange  story  because  it  is  strange.  "  I  tell  the 
story  as  it  happened,"  he  says  again  and  again,  "let 
those  explain  it  who  can."  These  are  genuine  pheno- 
mena, and  Wesley  has  a  scientific  respect  for  facts. 

The  true  literary  quality  of  the  Journal  can  only  be 
realised  when  it  is  put  side  by  side  with  the  other  two 
famous  works  of  the  same  general  type,  belonging  to  the 
same  period — Horace  Walpole's  "Letters,"  and  Boswell's 
"  Johnson."  What  other  generation  of  Englishmen  yields 
such  a  trinity  of  self-drawn  portraits  as  these  three 
picturesque  and  strangely  contrasted  figures! 

Walpole  and  Wesley  were  contemporaries,  and  the 
contrast  of  their  diaries  is  nothing  short  of  dramatic. 
Walpole  is  an  idler,  a  human  butterfly.  He  has  no 
serious  business  in  life ;  but  his  lightness,  both  of  touch 
and  of  spirit,  has  a  curious  charm  with  it.  And  still,  in 
the  dainty  and  scented  amber  of  his  gossip,  lie  embalmed 
for  human  curiosity  the  lords  and  ladies,  the  rakes  and 
flirts,  the  fools  and  spendthrifts  of  that  generation.  The 
very  element  in  which  Walpole  lives  is  an  atmosphere 
of  malicious  gossip.  To  hear,  to  tell,  to  write,  all  the 
scandalous  stories  of  his  day  was  his  chief  occupation; 
and  the  sense  of  the  value  of  his  gossip  is  shown  by  the 
care  in  which  he  kept  copies  of  his  own  letters. 

Johnson,  too,  was  Wesley's  contemporary,  and  with  his 
courage,  his  cudgel-like  logic,  his  robust  common-sense, 
his  respect  for  realities,  is  a  more  manly  figure  than 
Walpole,  and  has  an  infinitely  better  title  to  human 
respect.  But  if  Walpole  looked  on  men  and  women 
simply  for  the  entertainment  they  afforded  him,  and  with 
a  remoteness  too  careless  to  be  scientific  ;  Johnson,  on  the 
other  hand,  valued  literature  more  than  men  and  women 
and  perhaps  he  valued  politics  even  more  than  literature. 
All  men  for  him  were  capable  of  being  divided  into  two 
classes,  to  be  cudgelled,  or  to  be  praised,  according  as 
they  were  Whigs  or  Tories. 

Wesley's  standpoint  is  parted  by  whole  horizons  from 

2  H 


482  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

that  of  either  Walpole  or  Johnson.  He  sees  men  and 
women  as  they  stand  related  to  eternity.  His  temper 
towards  them  is  not  that  of  a  peeping  curiosity  like 
Walpole's,  nor  of  vehement  resentments  and  preferences 
like  those  of  Johnson.  It  is  that  of  a  passionate  and 
divine  pity,  an  untiring  concern  for  their  happiness.  He 
has  an  overpowering  sense  of  the  value  of  men  apart  from 
all  question  of  their  social  standing,  their  politics,  their 
knowledge  or  ignorance,  their  poverty  or  wealth.  He  sees 
them,  in  a  word — as  far  as  such  a  vision  is  possible  to 
human  eyes — as  God  sees  them  ! 

Wesley's  best  literary  work  is  not  his  Journal.  It  is 
his  famous  "  Appeal  to  Men  of  Reason  and  Religion."  Who 
wants  to  know  what  the  English  language,  at  its  highest 
point  of  clearness  and  power,  is,  may  well  turn  to  these 
famous  "Appeals."  They  are  unmatched  in  fire  and 
power;  unrivalled  in  their  translucent  clearness.  The 
present  writer,  at  least,  knows  nothing  else  in  the  English 
language  to  excel  them,  alike  for  directness,  simplicity, 
and  strength.  The  clear,  terse,  hurrying  syllables  burn 
with  a  white  flame  of  conviction.  Here  is  Wesley's  style 
at  its  best.  Swift's  fierce  syllables  burn  with  a  more  evil 
fire;  and  there  is  smoke — smoke  sometimes  as  of  the  pit ! 
— as  well  as  flame  in  them.  Burke  has,  of  course,  a 
more  glowing  colour,  and  a  wider  imaginative  range  than 
Wesley.  His  sentences  resemble  disintegrated  light.  But 
what  they  gain  in  colour  they  lose  hi  simplicity  and 
clearness.  Wesley's  short,  packed,  monosyllabic  sentences 
are  a  perfect  medium  for  the  swiftest  logic  the  human 
brain  can  shape,  and  they  reflect  some  of  the  loftiest 
emotions  the  human  soul  can  know. 

The  "Appeal"  shows  that  Wesley  has  in  him  a  fine 
capacity  for  anger;  but  his  anger  only  serves  to  give  a 
new  edge  to  his  logic.  He  is  a  tremendous  disputant. 
His  swift  and  pitiless  logic,  because  of  its  very  swiftness — 
its  accent  of  haste — has  not  seldom  the  effect  of  scorn.  It 
cuts  like  a  whip.  His  reply  to  Bishop  Lavington  in  the 
second  Appeal  is  a  case  in  point.  Bishop  Lavington  was 
a  typical  Hanoverian  divine — fat,  drowsy,  contented,  and 
as  destitute  of  spiritual  sense  as  a  block  of  wood.  He 
resents,  with  an  anger  that  has  in  it  a  certain  note  of 
terror,  the  "  enthusiasm  "  of  the  Revival.  What  is  there 


WESLEY   IN    LITERATURE  483 

in  religion  to  be  "  enthusiastic  "  about  ?  He  called  upon 
all  his  clergy  to  make  common  cause  against  the  Meth- 
odists. He  felt  about  them  as  a  French  secularist  to-day 
feels  about  the  clergy.  They  were  the  common  enemy. 
They  must  be  suppressed  at  any  cost,  and  by  any  methods. 
Wesley  replies  to  Bishop  Lavington's  charges  in  detail, 
and  with  infinite  patience,  and  in  his  closing  words  he 
strikes  a  lofty  note.  A  bishop  dealing  publicly  with  a 
question  of  religion  has  great  influence.  Thousands  will 
accept  his  utterances.  No  doubt,  Bishop  Lavington  suc- 
ceeded in  his  purpose  of  "preserving"  multitudes  from 
being  touched  by  the  forces  of  the  Revival.  Wesley 
acknowledges  this,  and  goes  on : — 

"My  lord,  it  cannot  be  long  before  we  shall  both  drop  this 
house  of  earth,  and  stand  naked  before  God.  No,  nor  before  we 
shall  see  the  great  white  Throne  coming  down  from  heaven,  and 
Him  that  sitteth  thereon.  On  His  left  hand  shall  be  those  who  are 
shortly  to  dwell  in  everlasting  fire,  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his 
angels.  In  that  number  will  be  all  who  died  in  their  sins.  And, 
among  the  rest,  those  whom  you  '  preserved '  from  repentance. 
Will  you  then  rejoice  in  your  success  ?  The  Lord  God  grant  it 
may  not  be  said  in  that  hour,  '  These  have  perished  in  their  ini- 
quity. But  their  blood  I  require  at  thy  hands.'" 

Wesley,  in  literature,  was,  it  must  be  confessed,  a  fiddle 
with  one  string.  He  has  only  one  note.  In  each  book, 
in  turn,  he  sets  out  from  a  given  point,  and  for  a  given 
end ;  and  he  never  loiters ;  he  never  digresses.  The 
landscape  has  no  interest  for  him.  His  only  concern  is  to 
reach  his  goal,  and  to  do  the  precise  bit  of  business  in 
hand.  This  habit  of  using  literature  only  as  a  tool,  or  as 
a  weapon,  of  course,  gives  Wesley  a  certain  narrowness ; 
but  it  is  the  virtue  of  a  sword-edge  to  be  narrow !  And, 
behind  Wesley's  logic,  there  is  always  the  impact  of  some- 
thing stronger  than  logic,  the  force  of  a  tremendous 
personality,  of  a  life  occupied  in  great  things,  and  the 
channel  of  great  energies.  Wesley  unconsciously  writes 
and  argues  like  a  man  who  has  come  down  for  a  moment 
from  some  loftier  realm,  and  from  the  preoccupation  of 
some  divine  task.  And  the  utter  unconsciousness  of  the 
mood  robs  it  of  all  arrogance,  and  makes  the  descent  both 
credible  and  impressive. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS 

WESLEY'S  mind,  with,  its  positive  and  logical  turn,  easily 
crystallised  into  definite  opinions ;  while  its  qualities  of 
courage  and  independence  gave  to  many  of  these  an 
original  turn.  He  was  a  man  of  relentless  method,  and 
he  had  a  tireless  industry  in  recording  everything  he  saw 
or  experienced.  His  opinions,  as  a  result,  on  all  sorts 
of  subjects — profane  and  secular,  historical  and  literary — 
are  scattered  with  great  abundance  through  his  Journal 
and  correspondence.  Not  seldom  they  represent  hasty 
judgments,  or  are  built  on  half  knowledge  of  things; 
but  they  are  usually  marked  with  great  shrewdness,  and 
always  by  great  confidence ;  and  their  very  positiveness 
and  originality  give  them  very  often  a  look  of  humour. 

On  historical  characters,  for  example,  Wesley's  judg- 
ments are  marked  by  great  pungency  and  frankness,  and, 
if  generally  accepted,  would  bring  to  wreck  not  a  few 
great  reputations.  He  was  a  good  Tory,  but  he  had  too 
much  resolute  common-sense  to  cherish  any  illusion  about 
that  "royal  martyr"  Charles  I.  "The  chief  sin  which 
brought  the  king  to  the  block,"  Wesley  says,  "was  his 
persecuting  the  real  Christians."  Wesley  tells  the  story 
of  the  death  of  "  that  monster  of  cruelty,  Graham  of 
Claverhouse,  afterwards,  as  a  reward  for  his  execrable 
villainies,  created  Lord  Dundee."  "  The  tradition  current 
in  Scotland,"  says  Wesley,  "is:  At  the  battle  of  Killie- 
crankie,  being  armed  in  steel  from  head  to  foot,  he  was 
brandishing  his  sword  over  his  head,  and  swearing  a  broad 
oath,  that  before  the  sun  went  down,  he  would  not  leave 
an  Englishman  alive.  Just  then  a  musket-ball  struck 
him  under  the  arm,  at  the  joints  of  his  armour.  Is  it 
enthusiasm  to  say  '  Thus  the  hand  of  God  rewarded  him 
according  to  his  works  '  ? " 

As  for  Charles   II.,  after   reading  an  account  of  the 


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WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS  485 

sufferings  of  the  Presbyterians  in  Scotland,  during  his 
reign,  Wesley  writes :  "  Oh,  what  a  blessed  governor  was 
that  good-natured  man,  so-called  King  Charles  II. ! 
Bloody  Queen  Mary  was  a  lamb,  a  mere  dove,  in  com- 
parison." "  Many  of  the  Protestant  Bishops  of  King 
Charles,"  he  says  again,  "had  neither  more  religion  or 
humanity  than  the  Popish  Bishops  of  Queen  Mary." 

Wesley  is  ironically  sceptical  as  to  St.  Patrick  and  his 
performances,  and  the  perusal  of  the  life  of  that  saint 
leaves  him  under  the  melancholy  conviction  that  it  is 
a  myth,  or  at  least  the  story  "  smells  strong  of  romance." 

" '  I  never  heard  before,'  says  Wesley,  '  of  an  apostle  sleeping 
thirty-five  years,  and  beginning  to  preach  at  threescore.  But  his 
success  staggers  me  the  most  of  all.  No  blood  of  the  martyrs  is 
here ;  no  reproach ;  no  scandal  of  the  Cross ;  no  persecution  to 
those  that  will  live  godly.  Nothing  is  to  be  heard  of,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end,  but  kings,  nobles,  warriors,  bowing  down 
before  him.  Thousands  are  converted,  without  any  opposition  at 
all ;  twelve  thousand  at  one  sermon.  If  these  things  were  so, 
either  there  was  then  no  devil  in  the  world,  or  St.  Patrick  did  not 
preach  the  Gospel  of  Christ.' " 

As  to  the  monkish  traditions  that  in  the  seventh  or 
eighth  century  Ireland  was  sown  thick  with  colleges,  and 
the  whole  island  a  centre  whence  piety  and  learning 
streamed  on  wondering  mankind ;  "  this,"  says  Wesley 
bluntly,  "  ranks  with  the  history  of  Bel  and  the  Dragon." 

Walpole's  "  Historic  Doubts "  convinced  Wesley  that 
Richard  III.  was  neither  a  hunchback  nor  a  savage,  and 
he  explains  the  universal  tradition  to  the  contrary  by 
saying  that,  "  for  fifty  years  no  one  could  contradict  that 
account  but  at  the  peril  of  his  head."  Wesley  finds  time 
and  curiosity  enough  to  visit  the  Waxworks  in  Spring 
Gardens,  and  reports  that  most  of  these  royalties  show 
their  characters  in  the  countenance,  and  very  unamiable 
characters,  apparently,  they  exhibit.  "  Sense  and  majesty 
appear  in  the  King  of  Spain  ;  dulness  and  sottishness  in 
tne  King  of  France ;  infernal  subtlety  in  the  late  King  of 
Prussia  (as  well  as  in  the  skeleton  Voltaire);  calmness 
and  humanity  in  the  Emperor,  and  King  of  Portugal ; 
exquisite  stupidity  in  the  Prince  of  Orange ;  and  amazing 
coarseness,  with  everything  that  is  unamiable,  in  the 


486  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Czarina."  Wesley's  views  of  "  that  poor  injured  woman, 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots,"  will  delight  most  Scotchmen.  He 
records  that  Dr.  Stuart,  in  his  "History  of  Scotland," 
"  proves,  beyond  all  possibility  of  doubt,  that  the  charges 
against  Queen  Mary  were  totally  groundless ;  that  she  was 
betrayed  basely  by  her  own  servants,  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end;  and  that  she  was  not  only  one  of  the  best 
princesses  then  in  Europe,  but  one  of  the  most  blameless, 
yea,  and  the  most  pious  women ! "  Of  James  I.  Wesley 
cherishes  the  darkest  views ;  "  a  covetous  and  bloodthirsty 
tyrant"  is  his  summary.  Of  George  II.,  Wesley  asks, 
"  Will  England  ever  have  a  better  prince  ?  " 

Having  strayed  by  some  odd  eddy  of  circumstance  into 
the  House  of  Lords,  when  the  King  was  present,  Wesley 
draws  a  picturesque  little  vignette  of  him. 

"  I  was  in  the  robe-chamber,  adjoining  the  House  of  Lords,  when 
the  King  put  on  his  robes.  His  brow  was  much  furrowed  with 
age,  and  quite  clouded  with  care.  And  is  this  all  the  world  can 
give  even  to  a  king,  all  the  grandeur  it  can  afford  ?  A  blanket  of 
ermine  round  his  shoulders,  so  heavy  and  cumbersome  he  can 
scarce  move  under  it.  An  huge  heap  of  borrowed  hair,  with  a  few 
plates  of  gold  and  glittering  stones  upon  his  head  !  Alas,  Avhat  a 
bauble  is  human  greatness  !  " 

Wesley,  on  another  occasion,  spends  two  or  three  hours 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  says,  "  I  had  frequently  heard 
that  this  was  the  most  venerable  assembly  in  Europe, 
but  how  was  I  disappointed ! " 

Wesley's  literary  judgments  are  equally  positive  and  un- 
conventional. He  has  no  superstitious  regard  for  great 
reputations ;  he  thumps  them,  indeed,  with  a  courage 
which  is  always  amusing,  and  sometimes  very  refreshing. 
Rousseau  he  describes  as  "a  shallow  yet  supercilious 
infidel,  two  degrees  below  Voltaire."  "Sure,"  he  cries, 
"  a  more  consummate  coxcomb  never  saw  the  sun." 

"He  is  a  mere  misanthrope ;  a  cynic  all  over.  So,  indeed,  is 
his  brother-infidel,  Voltaire ;  and  well-nigh  as  great  a  coxcomb. 
As  to  his  book,  the  advices  which  are  good  are  trite  and  common, 
only  disguised  under  new  expressions.  And  those  which  are  new, 
which  are  really  his  own,  are  lighter  than  vanity  itself.  Such 
discoveries  I  always  expect  from  those  who  are  too  wise  to  believe 
their  Bibles." 


WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS  487 

Voltaire's  name  is  made  the  text  of  a  very  amusing 
discussion  on  languages.  Wesley  has  read  the  "Henriade," 
and  as  a  result  he  says — 

"  I  was  more  than  ever  convinced,  that  the  French  is  the  poorest, 
meanest  language  in  Europe ;  that  it  is  no  more  comparable  to  the 
German  or  Spanish,  than  a  bagpipe  is  to  an  organ  ;  and  that,  with 
regard  to  poetry  in  particular,  considering  the  incorrigible  uncouth- 
ness  of  their  measure,  and  their  always  writing  in  rhyme  (to  say 
nothing  of  their  vile  double  rhymes,  nay,  and  frequent  false 
rhymes),  it  is  as  impossible  to  write  a  fine  poem  in  French,  as  to 
make  fine  music  upon  a  Jew's  harp  !  " 

Sterne  fares  badly  at  John  Wesley's  hands,  as  might  be 
expected.  Two  men  more  absolutely  opposed  in  temper 
and  genius  can  hardly  be  imagined.  "The  word  ' senti- 
mental,'" Wesley  says,  "is  not  sense;  he  might  as  well 
have  used  the  word  '  continental,' "  and  the  "  Sentimental 
Journey"  he  sums  up  in  the  phrase,  "One  fool  makes 
many."  Where  questions  of  morality  are  concerned, 
Wesley's  judgment  is  inexorable.  He  made  a  careful 
study  of  Macchiavelli's  famous  and  wicked  book. 

"  I  weighed  the  sentiments  that  were  less  common ;  transcribed 
the  passages  wherein  they  were  contained ;  compared  one  passage 
with  another,  and  endeavoured  to  form  a  cool,  impartial  judgment. 
And  my  cool  judgment  is,  that  if  all  the  other  doctrines  of  devils 
which  have  been  committed  to  writing  since  letters  were  in  the 
world  were  collected  together  in  one  volume,  it  would  fall  short 
of  this ;  and  that  should  a  prince  form  himself  by  this  book,  so 
calmly  recommending  hypocrisy,  treachery,  lying,  robbery,  oppres- 
sion, adultery,  whoredom,  and  murder  of  all  kinds,  Domitian  or 
Nero  would  be  an  angel  of  light  compared  to  that  man." 

Of  an  English  writer,  equally  evil  in  his  teaching, 
Wesley  writes — perhaps  because  he  was  an  Englishman — 
in  yet  severer  terms.  He  had  read  Mandeville's  "  Fable 
of  the  Bees,"  and  finds  it  more  atrocious  than  Mac- 
chiavelli's "  Prince." 

"  The  Italian  recommends  only  a  few  vices,  as  useful  to  some 
particular  men,  and  on  some  particular  occasions ;  but  the  English- 
man loves  and  cordially  recommends  vice  of  every  kind,  not  only  as 
useful  now  and  then,  but  as  absolutely  necessary  at  all  times  for 
all  communities  ! " 


488  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

But  if  Wesley  is  stern  against  immoral  teaching,  he  is 
quick  to  see,  and  generous  to  praise,  any  good  even  in 
those  most  unlike  himself.  He  read  "  that  surprising 
book  the  '  Life  of  Ignatius  Loyola/ "  and  says  "  he  was 
surely  one  of  the  greatest  men  that  ever  was  engaged  in 
the  support  of  so  bad  a  cause." 

The  belief  that  God's  mercy  was  co-extensive  with  His 
universe ;  that  sound  faith  might  be  hidden  beneath  the 
appearance  of  heresy,  and  that  many  will  be  saved  by 
Christ  who  never  heard  the  name  of  Christ,  was  held  by 
Wesley  strongly.  Thus  he  says :  "  I  read  to-day  part  of 
the  meditations  of  Marcus  Antoninus.  What  a  strange 
emperor !  And  what  a  strange  heathen !  .  .  .  I  make  no 
doubt  but  this  is  one  of  those  '  many  who  shall  come  from 
the  East  and  the  West,  and  sit  down  with  Abraham, 
Isaac,  and  Jacob,  while  the  children  of  the  kingdom, 
nominal  Christians,  are  shut  out.' "  On  the  other  hand, 
he  thinks  it  open  to  grave  doubt  "  whether  Judas  claims 
so  hot  a  place  in  hell  as  Alexander  the  Great!"  He 
plainly  holds  the  greatest  soldier  of  all  history  was 
little  better  than  a  murderer  on  a  great  scale,  as  "he 
slew  thousands,  both  in  battle,  and  in  and  after  taking 
cities,  for  no  other  crime  than  defending  their  wives  and 
children." 

Wesley's  judgments  of  ecclesiastical  persons  and  events 
are  marked  by  robust  good  sense.  He  reads  the  history 
of  the  Puritans,  and  is  able  to  see  both  the  cruelty  of  their 
oppressors  and  the  wrong-headedness  of  the  Puritans 
themselves.  "I  stand  in  amaze,  first,  at  the  execrable 
spirit  of  persecution  which  drove  these  venerable  men  out 
of  the  Church,  and  with  which  Queen  Elizabeth's  clergy 
were  as  deeply  tinctured  as  ever  Queen  Mary's  were ; 
secondly,  at  the  weakness  of  those  holy  confessors,  many 
of  whom  spent  so  much  of  their  time  and  strength  in 
disputing  about  surplices  and  hoods,  or  kneeling  at  the 
Lord's  Supper."  He  reads  Baxter's  "  History  of  the 
Councils,"  and  is  filled  with  righteous  anger  at  the  story 
of  what  Christ's  earthly  Church  has  suffered  from  those 
who  imagined  they  were  serving  it. 

"  What  a  company  of  execrable  wretches  have  they  been  (one 
cannot  justly  give  them  a  milder  title),  who  have  almost  in  every 


WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS  489 

age  since  St.  Cyprian  taken  upon  them  to  govern  the  Church ! 
How  has  one  Council  been  perpetually  cursing  another,  and  de- 
livering all  over  to  Satan,  whether  predecessors  or  contemporaries, 
who  did  not  implicitly  receive  their  determinations,  though  gener- 
ally trifling,  sometimes  false,  and  frequently  unintelligible  or  self- 
contradictory  !  Surely  Mahometanism  was  let  loose  to  reform  the 
Christians ! " 

On  some  subjects  Wesley  cherished  peculiar  views.  He 
believed,  for  example,  that  a  future  life  for  animals  was 
possible,  or  even  probable.  The  creatures  have  suffered 
in  that  reign  of  pain  and  death  which  the  sin  of  man 
has  called  into  existence ;  why  should  they  not  share  in 
the  results  of  man's  redemption?  The  whole  creation 
groaneth  and  travaileth  hi  pain  together ;  and,  says 
Wesley,  "whether  men  attend  or  not,  their  groans  are 
not  dispersed  hi  idle  air,  but  enter  into  the  ears  of  Him 
Who  made  them."  And  this  groaning  creation  "  waits  for 
the  redemption."  "  The  promise,  '  Neither  shall  there  be 
any  more  pain,'  will  take  place,"  says  Wesley,  "  not  in  man 
alone,  but  in  every  creature  according  to  his  capacity; 
the  whole  brute  creation  will  be  restored  to  all  that  they 
have  lost.  And  what,"  he  asks,  "  if  it  should  please  the 
all-wise  and  all-gracious  Creator  to  raise  them  higher  in 
the  scale  of  beings  ?  What  if  it  should  please  Him,  when 
He  makes  us  equal  to  angels,  to  make  them  what  we  are 
now — creatures  capable  of  God  ? " 

Coleridge  adds  a  somewhat  cruel  footnote  to  these 
sentences.  "  There  is  no  meaning,"  he  says,  "  in  the  word 
'  them  '  as  applied  to  flies,  fish,  worms,  &c.  If  I  suffer  a 
door  to  fall  in  pieces  and  put  a  dog  in  the  passage  instead, 
can  I  be  said  to  have  raised  the  door  into  a  dog  ? " 

Wesley  believed  in  witches  ;  not  in  any  particular  witch, 
that  is,  but  in  the  reality,  in  some  cases,  of  witchcraft. 
He  had  persuaded  himself,  indeed,  that  to  surrender  be- 
lief in  witchcraft  would  be  to  quarrel  with  the  authority 
of  the  Bible ;  a  circumstance  wnich  proves  that  his  logic 
was  not  always  sufficiently  qualified  by  intelligence. 

While  in  so  many  respects  in  advance  of  his  century, 
Wesley,  in  brief,  in  some  matters  shared  its  prejudices. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  eighteenth  century 
his  Majesty's  judges  "believed  in  witches,"  and  the  laws 
of  the  realm  treated  witchcraft  as  a  real  and  deadly  fact, 


490  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

to  be  dealt  with  adequately  only  by  the  stake  or  the 
gallows.  Two  witches  were  executed  at  Northampton  in 
1705,  and  five  more  in  1712.  A  woman  was  executed  in 
Scotland  for  witchcraft  in  1722.  When  the  law  took 
witchcraft  seriously  enough  to  hang  or  burn  women  sup- 
posed to  practise  the  black  art,  Wesley  may  be  forgiven 
for  believing  genuine  cases  of  witchcraft  to  exist. 

Wesley's  political  opinions  were  sometimes  of  an  odd 
complexion.  In  his  famous  letter  to  Lord  North  on  the 
American  troubles  he  sets  out  by  saying,  "  I  am  a  High 
Churchman,  the  son  of  a  High  Churchman,  bred  up  from 
my  childhood  in  the  highest  notions  of  passive  obedience 
and  non-resistance,"  and  those  words  express  with  perfect 
accuracy  the  general  bent  of  Wesley's  politics.  But  his 
conscience,  or  his  reason,  when  any  adequate  occasion 
arose,  broke  away  completely  from  the  intolerant  and 
stupid  Toryism  by  which  Great  Britain,  through  wide 
spaces  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  hag-ridden. 

On  the  American  trouble,  Wesley's  publications,  it  must 
be  admitted,  are  of  a  very  tangled  and  contradictory  sort, 
due  to  the  conflict  betwixt  the  original  Tory  bias  inherited 
from  his  father,  and  his  own  larger  and  wiser  mind.  In 
1768,  in  his  "Free  Thoughts  on  the  Present  State  of 
Public  Affairs,"  he  declared  he  was  not  able  to  defend  the 
measures  which  had  been  taken  in  regard  to  America. 
"  I  doubt,"  he  added,  "  whether  any  man  can  defend  them, 
either  on  the  foot  of  law,  equity,  or  prudence."  But  in 
1775  he  published  his  "Calm  Address  to  our  American 
Colonies."  That  address  was  only  Dr.  Johnson's  pamphlet, 
"  Taxation  no  Tyranny,"  slightly  abridged,  and  it  reflected 
Johnson's  stubborn,  Tory  prejudices.  The  discontented 
Americans,  the  pamphlet  argued,  were  the  descendants  of 
men  who  either  had  no  votes,  or  had  resigned  them  by 
emigration.  They  had  a  right  to  the  shelter  of  the  laws, 
but  had  no  right  to  any  voice  in  their  making.  Their 
only  business  in  the  matter  of  taxes  was  to  pay  them. 
Wesley's  pamphlet  was  for  the  British  Cabinet  an  im- 
mense gain,  but  for  the  public  generally  it  was  an  im- 
mense perplexity.  Wesley  seemed  to  be  guilty  of  a 
double  offence.  He  had  turned  his  back  on  himself;  he 
had  stolen  Dr.  Johnson's  thunder. 

A  Baptist  minister  named  Caleb  Evans,  a  man  of  in- 


WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS  491 

telligence  and  character,  produced  a  new  charge  against 
Wesley.  He  had  recommended  a  certain  pamphlet,  "  An 
Argument  in  Defence  of  the  Exclusive  Right  of  the 
Colonists  to  Tax  Themselves,"  and  now  he  had  himself 
written  a  pamphlet  in  an  exactly  opposite  sense.  Wesley 
denied  that  he  had  seen  the  book,  but  abundant  evidence 
was  produced  to  show  that  this  was  not  the  case.  He  had 
certainly  recommended  the  book  to  some  of  his  friends. 
Wesley's  own  explanation  came  later,  and  was  sufficiently 
clear.  Writing  to  a  correspondent,  he  says : — 

"  I  will  simply  tell  you  the  thing  as  it  is.  As  I  was  returning 
from  the  Leeds  Conference,  one  gave  me  the  tract  which  you  refer 
to,  part  of  which  I  read  on  my  journey.  The  spirit  of  it  I  observed 
to  be  admirably  good,  and  I  then  thought  the  arguments  conclusive. 
In  consequence  of  which,  I  suppose  (though  I  do  not  remember  it), 
I  recommended  it  both  to  you  and  others ;  but  I  had  so  entirely 
forgotten  it  that,  even  when  it  was  brought  to  me  the  other  day,  I 
could  not  recollect  that  I  had  seen  it." 

This  cleared  Wesley  from  one  charge,  but  there  re- 
mained the  undeniable  fact  that  he  had  published  two 
sets  of  completely  opposite  opinions  on  the  American 
trouble.  Wesley  explains  the  matter  in  a  letter  so 
characteristic,  alike  in  its  brevity  and  its  frankness,  that 
it  deserves  to  be  reproduced : — 

"Rev.  Sir, — You  affirm  (i)  that  I  once  'doubted  whether  the 
measures  taken  with  respect  to  America  could  be  defended,  either 
on  the  foot  of  law,  equity,  or  prudence.'  I  did  doubt  of  these 
five  years,  nay,  indeed,  five  months  ago.  You  affirm  (2)  that  I 
'  declared '  (last  year)  '  the  Americans  were  an  oppressed,  injured 
people.  I  do  not  remember  that  I  did  ;  but  very  possibly  I  might. 
You  affirm  (3)  that  I  then  'strongly  recommended  an  argument 
for  the  exclusive  right  of  the  colonies  to  tax  themselves.'  I  believe 
I  did ;  but  I  am  now  of  another  mind." 

The  Tory  in  Wesley,  in  a  word,  responding  to  the 
strident  accents  of  that  yet  more  robust  Tory,  Dr.  Johnson, 
was  now  triumphant!  And  yet,  even  on  the  American 
question,  Wesley  somehow  read  the  situation,  and  was 
able  to  forecast  its  issue,  better  than  nearly  all  the  states- 


492  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

men  of  his  time.     There  is  something  of  a  prophetic  strain 
in  his  letter  to  Lord  North : — 

"  Is  it  common-sense  to  use  force  towards  the  Americans  1 
Whatever  has  been  affirmed,  these  men  will  not  be  frightened,  and 
they  will  not  be  conquered  easily.  Some  of  our  valiant  officers 
say  that  'two  thousand  men  will  clear  America  of  these  rebels.' 
No,  nor  twenty  thousand,  be  they  rebels  or  not,  not  perhaps  treble 
that  number.  They  are  strong ;  they  are  valiant ;  they  are  one  and 
all  enthusiasts,  enthusiasts  for  liberty,  calm,  deliberate  enthusiasts. 
In  a  short  time  they  will  understand  discipline  as  well  as  their  assail- 
ants. But  you  are  informed  'they  are  divided  among  themselves.' 
So  was  poor  Rehoboam  informed  concerning  the  ten  tribes ;  so  was 
Philip  informed  concerning  the  people  of  the  Netherlands.  No ; 
they  are  terribly  united  ;  they  think  they  are  contending  for  their 
wives,  children,  and  liberty.  Their  supplies  are  at  hand,  ours  are 
three  thousand  miles  off.  Are  we  able  to  conquer  the  Americans, 
suppose  they  are  left  to  themselves  ?  We  are  not  sure  of  this,  nor 
are  we  sure  that  all  our  neighbours  will  stand  stock-still." 

In  Wesley's  Journal  are  to  be  found  many  curious  self- 
judgments.  He  watches  himself,  the  play  of  his  own 
mind,  the  changes  of  his  own  feelings,  the  effect  external 
things  have  upon  him ;  and  generally  contemplates  him- 
self with  a  sort  of  detached  and  scientific  interest  which  is 
amusing.  Thus,  in  his  Journal,  under  date  August  8, 
1756,  he  writes,  "  I  find  it  of  great  use  to  be  in  suspense. 
It  is  an  excellent  means  of  breaking  our  will."  Wesley 
knew  that — if  only  as  the  result  of  the  rush  of  crowding 
duties,  all  clamouring  for  instant  settlement — he  ran  the 
risk  of  hasty  decisions.  The  practice  of  settling  a  matter 
offhand,  and  too  often  on  half  knowledge,  grew  into  a 
tyrannical  habit.  So  he  found  a  healthful  discipline  in 
what  to  most  people  is  the  secret  of  weakness — the  habit 
of  suspense. 

Wesley  notes,  too,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  his  own  tastes. 
Here  is  an  entry  in  his  Journal  which  shows  how  this 
busiest  of  living  men,  absorbed  in  the  affairs  of  other 
people,  yet  found  time  to  study  himself : — 

"  Tuesday,  July  3,  1764. — I  was  reflecting  on  an  odd  circum 
stance  which  I  cannot  account  for.  I  never  relish  a  tune  at  first 
hearing,  not  till  I  have  almost  learned  to  sing  it ;  and  as  I  learn  it 


WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS  493 

more  perfectly,  I  gradually  lose  my  relish  for  it.  I  observe  some- 
thing similar  in  poetry  ;  yea,  in  all  the  objects  of  imagination.  I 
seldom  relish  verses  at  first  hearing.  Till  I  have  heard  them  over 
and  over,  they  give  me  no  pleasure ;  and  they  give  me  next  to  none 
when  I  have  heard  them  a  few  times  more,  so  as  to  be  quite 
familiar.  Just  so  a  face  or  a  picture  which  does  not  strike  me  at 
first,  becomes  more  pleasing  as  I  grow  more  acquainted  with  it ; 
but  only  to  a  certain  point.  For  when  I  am  too  much  acquainted, 
it  is  no  longer  pleasing.  Oh,  how  imperfectly  do  we  understand 
even  the  machine  which  we  carry  about  us  ! " 

It  is  amusing  to  notice  how  Wesley  finds  his  very  virtues 
are  apt  to  become  his  snares.  He  was  the  most  forgiving 
of  men,  but  charity  itself  may  become  an  enervation ;  and 
Wesley  began  to  question  whether  he  did  not  forgive  too 
easily.  "  Others,"  he  says,  "  are  most  assaulted  in  the  weak 
side  of  their  soul ;  but  with  me  it  is  quite  otherwise.  If  I 
have  any  strength  at  all  (and  I  have  none  but  what  I  have 
received),  it  is  in  forgiving  injuries.  And  on  this  very  side 
I  am  assaulted,  more  frequently  than  on  any  other.  Yet 
leave  me  not  here  one  hour  to  myself,  or  I  shall  betray 
myself  and  Thee  ! " 

Wesley's  habit  of  exaggerating  the  importance  of  the 
particular  evil  he  was  trying  to  mend  finds  an  amusing 
illustration  in  the  onslaught  he  made  on  that  very  harm- 
less fluid — tea.  He  persuaded  himself  that  he  had  only 
escaped  from  an  attack  of  paralysis  by  giving  up  tea ;  and 
he  believed  that  half  the  poverty  of  the  nation  might  be 
abolished  at  a  stroke,  if  people  would  abandon  the  use  of 
this  dangerous  fluid.  His  argument  against  the  use  of 
tea  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  unconscious  burlesque  of  the  logic 
to-day  employed  against  the  use  of  alcoholic  liquors.  He 
represents  one  obstinate  objector  saying,  "  Tea  does  me  no 
harm;  why,  then,  should  I  leave  it  off'?"  Wesley's  reply 
is  that  everybody  is  responsible  for  his  example.  A  person 
of  cast-iron  stomach,  capable  of  resisting  the  deadly  cor- 
rosions of  tea,  might  by  his  example  tempt  some  weak 
brother  to  still  swallow  that  poisonous  fluid,  to  his  ruin. 
"  You  have  need,"  Wesley  cries  to  all  his  followers,  "  to 
abhor  it  as  deadly  poison,  and  to  renounce  it  from  this 
very  hour ! "  Wesley  himself  gave  up  the  use  of  tea,  and 
substituted  sugar  and  hot  water  for  twelve  years,  until 
Dr.  Fothergill,  his  medical  attendant,  ordered  him  to 


494  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

resume  its  use.  And  the  author  of  the  tract  on  tea  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  was  a  tea-drinker ! 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  example  of  Wesley's  odd 
opinions  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  Kingswood  school. 
The  inspiration  to  which  the  school  owed  its  origin  was 
noble.  It  was  meant  to  be  a  provision  for  the  children 
of  his  helpers.  "Was  it  fit,"  asked  Wesley,  "that  the 
children  of  those  who  leave  home,  wife,  and  all  that  is 
dear  to  save  souls  from  death  should  want  what  is  needful 
either  for  soul  or  body?"  Lady  Maxwell  supplied  the 
funds  for  starting  Kingswood,  and  Wesley  seized  the 
opportunity  for  creating  what  he  fondly  believed  would 
be  an  ideal  institution — a  Christian  school,  a  fountain  of 
Christianised  knowledge.  No  child  was  to  be  received 
over  twelve  years  of  age,  and  only  the  children  of  such 
parents  as  desired  that  they  should  be,  "  not  almost,  but 
altogether,  Christians."  There  was  to  be  a  Spartan  strain 
in  the  school.  The  children  of  "tender"  parents,  Wesley 
said,  had  no  business  there ;  and  every  parent  was  required 
to  give  a  pledge  that  he  would  not  take  his  child  from 
school,  "  no,  not  for  a  day,  till  he  took  him  for  good  and 
all."  But  Wesley,  much  as  he  loved  children,  did  not  in 
the  least  understand  child  nature,  and  he  drew  up  a  time- 
table for  the  little  boys  of  Kingswood  which  was  admirably 
calculated  to  make  them  either  lunatics  or  hypocrites. 

They  were  to  rise  at  four,  winter  and  summer;  each 
little  boy  was  to  spend  the  hour  from  four  to  five  in 
prayer,  singing,  and  self-examination.  The  humane  imagi- 
nation is  distressed  as  it  dwells  on  the  spectacle  of  twenty- 
eight  little  boys,  their  senses  drowsed  with  sleep,  getting  up 
at  four  o'clock  on  a  bitter  winter  morning,  and  spending 
a  whole  hour  in  the  process  of  examining  the  souls  within 
their  shivering  little  bodies.  Then  commenced  the  round 
of  hard  work,  sustained  by  plain  fare,  and  unlit  by  any 
cheerfulness  of  play.  Wesley,  says  Southey,  had  learned 
a  sour  German  proverb,  "  He  that  plays  when  he  is  a  child 
will  play  when  he  is  a  man,"  and  he  had  forgotten  the 
wholesome  English  saying,  the  reflex  of  cheerful  common- 
sense,  that  "  All  work  and  no  play  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy." 
No  holidays,  no  games,  no  boy  to  be  for  an  instant  out  of 
the  company  of  a  master — these  were  not  the  conditions 
to  produce  a  healthy  and  happy  boyhood. 


WESLEY'S  ODD  OPINIONS  495 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Kingswood  comes  next  to  his  own 
wife  in  the  vexation  it  caused  Wesley.  Human  nature 
was  in  quarrel  with  his  dreadful  time-table.  He  could 
not  get  masters  to  enforce  it,  or  children  to  survive  it. 
The  school  began  with  twenty-eight  pupils;  and  the 
second  year  the  number  had  shrunk  to  eighteen.  Out  of 
the  eighteen,  Wesley  records  that  "four  or  five  of  them 
were  very  uncommonly  wicked  " ;  two  had  to  be  dismissed 
as  incorrigible :  and  five  more  fled — wise  youths !  "  I 
spent  more  money,  time,  and  care  on  this  than  almost  any 
design  I  ever  had,"  says  Wesley.  "  I  wonder  how  I  am 
withheld  from  dropping  the  whole  design,  so  many  diffi- 
culties continually  attend  it."  But  it  was  not  in  his 
nature  to  abandon  a  plan  easily.  In  1766  he  writes:  "I 
told  my  whole  mind  to  the  masters  and  servants,  and 
spoke  to  the  children  in  a  far  stronger  manner  than  I 
ever  did  before.  I  will  kill  or  cure.  I  will  have  one  or 
the  other ;  a  Christian  school  or  none  at  all." 

A  jury  of  mothers,  empowered  to  sit  in  judgment  on 
Wesley's  ideas  of  a  Christian  school,  might  nave  brought 
in  a  verdict  which  would  have  surprised  him.  The  account 
of  Kingswood  given  by  Adam  Clarke,  a  quite  impartial 
witness,  resembles  nothing  so  much  as  a  chapter  from  the 
records  of  "Dotheboys  Hall"  in  "Nicholas  Nickleby." 
But  Wesley  was  reluctant  to  give  up  an  experiment  dear 
to  him.  So  late  as  1783,  when  the  school  had  been  thirty- 
five  years  in  existence,  a  resolution  of  the  Conference 
declares  that  "  either  the  school  should  cease,  or  the  rules 
of  it  be  particularly  observed ;  particularly  that  the  children 
should  never  play,  and  that  a  master  should  be  always 
present  with  them." 

The  school,  no  doubt,  produced  some  good  scholars,  and 
had  a  certain  fame  ;  and  Wesley's  indomitable  will,  at  the 
cost  of  much  youthful  suffering,  prevailed.  Wesley's  last 
reference  to  Kingswood,  indeed,  has  in  it  a  note  of  exulta- 
tion. On  September  n,  1789,  he  writes,  "I  went  over  to 
Kingswood.  Sweet  recess,  where  everything  now  is  just 
as  I  wish !  I  spent  some  time  with  the  children,  all  of 
whom  behaved  well."  But  if  we  had  a  faithful  transcript 
of  the  letters  the  poor  little  boys  at  Kingswood  wrote  to 
their  mothers,  we  might  discover  that  Wesley's  "sweet 
recess  "  wore,  to  the  unhappy  boys  who  dwelt  in  it,  a  very 


496  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

different  aspect.  Kingswood  School  achieved  one  result 
its  founder  never  contemplated.  It  proves  that  he  could, 
on  occasion,  blunder  as  badly  as  ordinary  men.  No 
mother  can  read  the  story  of  the  school  and  quite  forgive 
Wesley.  A  later  and  wiser  Methodism,  it  is  pleasant  to 
record,  has  completely  transfigured  the  institution.  To- 
day it  reaches  Wesley's  ends  without  using  his  methods. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    CLOSING   DAY 

WESLEY  had  the  gift — it  might  also  be  described  as  the 
art — of  clean-blooded  health  in  an  unsurpassed  degree. 
Probably  nobody  was  ever  better  served  by  his  own  nerves 
and  senses — by  hand  and  foot,  by  eye  and  ear  and  voice — 
than  he.  His  voice,  it  is  true,  had  no  organ-like  notes,  no 
volume  of  ear-shattering  sound.  It  was  a  clear  and  flexible 
tenor  of  flute-like  sweetness  and  carrying  power,  and  with 
a  curious  suggestion  of  authority  in  it.  Wesley  tells  how 
once  he  measured  the  range  his  voice  could  cover.  It  was 
clearly  audible  for  a  distance  of  140  yards.  And  all 
Wesley's  physical  faculties  had  the  same  characteristics 
of  elasticity  and  strength.  "  A  human  game-cock,"  Leslie 
Stephen  calls  him.  He  was  short  of  stature,  light  of 
weight,  erect  and  slender.  He  tells  in  his  Journal  how,  in 
the  year  1769,  "I  weighed  122  pounds,  and  in  the  year 
1783  I  weighed  not  a  pound  more  or  a  pound  less."  A 
man  who  weighed  not  quite  nine  stone  had  certainly 
nothing  of  the  impressiveness  which  belongs  to  mere 
bulk;  but  every  fibre  of  Wesley's  slender,  erect,  little 
body  had  a  toughness  as  of  tempered  steel.  Work  was 
for  nim  a  tonic.  All  his  faculties  grew  tougher  by  dint  of 
intense  and  incessant  use. 

And  tune  seemed  to  have  lost  its  arresting  office  for 
this  unhasting,  unresting  figure.  His  comrades  died. 
One  group  of  helpers  after  another  passed  away.  A 
second  generation  of  workers,  the  children  of  his  original 
comrades,  were  about  him.  Still  Wesley  moved  on  his 
planet-like  course,  preaching  incessantly,  writing,  reading, 
administering,  travelling  through  all  weathers  and  on  all 
roads.  "  Leisure  and  I,"  he  once  said,  at  the  beginning  of 
his  career,  "  have  shaken  hands."  And  Time  and  Wesley 
had  apparently  shaken  hands  too !  The  flying  years 
whitened  his  hair,  and  so  gave  him  a  yet  more  saintlike 

497 


498  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

look ;  but  they  did  not  quench  the  sunshine  in  his  eyes, 
or  hush  the  music  in  his  voice,  or  chill  the  fire  of 
his  zeal. 

Wesley  was  accustomed,  with  almost  amusing  fidelity, 
to  interrogate  all  his  faculties  and  to  record  in  his 
Journal — usually  on  his  birthday — the  condition  in  which 
he  found  his  mind  and  body — almost  as  if  they  belonged 
to  some  one  else.  And  so,  through  the  last  ten  or  fifteen 
years  of  his  life,  when  he  had  passed  the  age  at  which 
most  men  fall  into  decay,  we  have  successive  records  of 
his  amazing  vitality,  and  of  the  changes — or  of  the  absence 
of  change — to  be  noted  in  it. 

Thus,  in  1764,  Wesley  writes:  "I  breakfasted  with  Mr. 
Whitefield,  who  seemed,  to  be  an  old,  old  man,  being  fairly 
worn  out  in  his  Master's  service,  though  he  has  hardly 
seen  fifty  years.  Yet  it  pleases  God  that  I,  who  am  now 
in  my  sixty- third  year,  find  no  disorder,  no  weakness,  no 
decay,  no  difference  from  what  I  was  at  five-and-twenty, 
only  that  I  have  fewer  teeth,  and  more  grey  hairs."  Two 
years  afterwards  he  records  how  in  a  single  day  he  travelled 
1 10  miles,  and  on  the  road  read  the  "  History  of  Palmyra," 
and  Norden's  "  Travels  in  Egypt  and  Abyssinia." 

On  June  28,  1774,  he  inserts  in  his  Journal  a  character- 
istic study  of  his  own  condition,  and  the  causes  which 
explain  a  state  of  health  so  remarkable : — 

"  This  being  my  birthday,  the  first  day  of  my  seventy-second 
year,  I  was  considering,  How  is  this,  that  I  find  just  the  same 
strength  as  I  did  thirty  years  ago  1  That  my  sight  is  considerably 
better  now,  and  my  nerves  firmer  than  they  were  then  ?  That  I 
have  none  of  the  infirmities  of  old  age,  and  have  lost  several  I  had 
in  my  youth  ?  The  grand  cause  is,  the  good  pleasure  of  God,  Who 
doeth  whatsoever  pleases  Him.  The  chief  means  are — i.  My 
constantly  rising  at  four  for  about  fifty  years.  2.  My  generally 
preaching  at  five  in  the  morning ;  one  of  the  most  healthy  exercises 
in  the  world.  3.  My  never  travelling  less,  by  sea  and  land,  than 
four  thousand  five  hundred  miles  in  a  year." 

A  year  later  he  writes : — 

"  I  am  seventy-three  years  old,  and  far  abler  to  preach  than  I 
was  at  twenty-three.  What  natural  means  has  God  used  to  pro- 
duce so  wonderful  an  effect  ?  First,  continual  exercise  and  change 
of  air ;  second,  rising  at  four  every  morning ;  third,  the  ability  to 


THE   CLOSING   DAY  499 

sleep  at  will ;  fourth,  the  never  losing  a  night's  sleep  in  my  life ; 
fifth,  two  violent  fevers  and  two  deep  consumptions  (these  were 
rough  medicines,  but  they  caused  iny  flesh  to  come  again  as  the 
flesh  of  a  little  child) ;  lastly,  evenness  of  temper.  I  feel  and 
grieve,  but,  by  the  grace  of  God,  I  fret  at  nothing." 

When  he  was  seventy-five  years  of  age,  he  records  how 
he  outwalked  the  stage  coach  for  five  miles  on  the  deep 
Kentish  roads.  His  record  in  1781  is: — 

"  This  day  I  enter  into  my  seventy- ninth  year,  and  by  the  grace 
of  God  feel  no  more  of  the  infirmities  of  age  than  I  did  at  twenty- 
nine.  I  have  now  preached  thrice  a  day  for  seven  days  following, 
but  it  is  just  the  same  as  if  it  had  been  but  once." 

From  what  strange  fountains  of  strength  had  this 
amazing  old  man  drunk ! 

In  1784  Wesley  was  in  Scotland,  in  wild  weather,  and 
beaten  upon  by  the  bitter  moor  winds.  He  records  that 
he  walked  twelve  miles  without  a  sense  of  fatigue — and  he 
was  eighty-one  years  of  age  !  In  1785  he  writes : — 

"  It  is  now  eleven  years  since  I  felt  any  such  thing  as  weariness. 
Many  times  when  I  speak  my  voice  fails,  and  I  can  speak  no 
longer.  Frequently  when  I  walk  my  strength  fails,  and  then  I  can 
walk  no  longer.  Yet  even  then  I  feel  no  sense  of  weariness,  but 
am  perfectly  easy  from  head  to  foot." 

In  June  1786,  when  he  was  eighty- three  years  old, 
Wesley  travelled  seventy-six  miles  in  one  day,  and  preached 
three  times ;  and  he  declares  that  at  the  end  of  the  day 
"  I  was  no  more  tired  than  when  I  rose  in  the  morning." 

These  remarkable  entries  need  perhaps  to  be  slightly 
discounted.  Wesley's  memory  sometimes  failed  him. 
He  describes,  for  example,  as  one  of  the  causes  of  his 
marvellous  health,  "  the  never  losing  a  night's  sleep  in  my 
life."  On  July  5,  1773,  he  writes :  "This  is  the  first  night 
I  ever  lay  awake  in  my  life,  though  I  had  ease  in  body  and 
mind."  "  In  seventy  years,"  he  says,  "  he  had  never  lost 
one  night's  sleep."  But  his  Journal  contradicts  these 
statements.  Thus  on  September  10,  1759,  he  records: 
"  Feverish  at  night,  could  not  sleep  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
till  between  two  and  three  in  the  morning."  On  July  27, 
1 767,  the  entry  is,  "  My  cough  is  so  violent  at  night  I 
could  not  sleep  a  quarter  of  an  hour  together." 


500  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Wesley  wisely  dwells  on  one  feature  of  his  life  com- 
monly overlooked,  yet  contributing  greatly  to  his  general 
health.  There  were  wide  spaces  of  solitude  in  all  his 
days.  No  man  ever  spent  more  time  amongst  crowds 
than  Wesley,  yet  few  lives  had  wider  intervals  of  healthful 
and  meditative  quiet.  He  writes  to  a  friend : — 

"  You  do  not  understand  my  manner  of  life.  ...  It  is  true,  I 
travel  four  or  five  thousand  miles  in  a  year.  But  I  generally 
travel  alone  in  my  carriage,  and  consequently  am  as  retired  ten 
hours  in  a  day  as  if  I  was  in  a  wilderness.  On  other  days  I  never 
spend  less  than  three  hours  (frequently  ten  or  twelve)  in  the  day 
alone.  So  there  are  few  persons  in  the  kingdom  who  spend  so 
many  hours  secluded  from  all  company." 

When  he  was  eighty-five  Wesley  first  begins  to  note 
signs  of  decaying  strength  in  himself.  His  step  was  not 
so  light,  his  sight  so  keen,  his  memory  so  sure,  as  it  had 
been.  But,  adds  the  indomitable  old  man,  "  I  do  not  feel 
such  a  thing  as  weariness,  either  in  travelling  or  preaching, 
and  I  am  not  conscious  of  any  decay  in  writing  sermons, 
which  I  do  as  readily  and,  I  believe,  as  correctly  as 
ever." 

But  an  old  man  is  not  always  conscious  of  the  changes 
in  himself.  Others  are  better  able  than  he  to  realise  the 
slower  brain,  the  less  assured  step,  the  failing  voice.  Wesley, 
as  Hampson  records,  wherever  he  was,  made  it  a  point  to 
preach  if  he  could  stand  up  on  his  legs ;  and  this  was  true 
in  his  old  age.  The  son  of  the  poet  Crabbe,  in  his  father's 
biography,  describes  one  of  Wesley's  sermons  at  this 
period  of  his  life.  He  was,  he  said,  "  exceedingly  old  and 
infirm,  and  was  attended,  almost  supported,  in  the  pulpit 
by  a  young  minister  on  each  side.  Wesley,  in  his  sermon, 
drew  on  his  classical  recollections.  He  quoted  some  lines 
from  Anacreon : — 

"  Oft  am  I  by  women  told, 
Poor  Anacreon  !  thou  grow'st  old  ; 
See,  thine  hairs  are  falling  all, 
Poor  Anacreon  !  how  they  fall ! 
Whether  I  grow  old  or  no, 
By  these  signs  I  do  not  know ; 
By  this  I  need  not  to  be  told, 
'Tis  time  to  live,  if  I  grow  old." 


THE    CLOSING   DAY  501 

Young  Crabbe  relates  that  Wesley  recited  these  lines  with 
a  mingled  fire  and  pathos  that  produced  the  greatest 
effect. 

In  his  eighty-sixth  year  (1789)  Wesley  makes  at  last, 
and  records,  the  discovery  of  quick-coming  age.  "  I  now 
find,"  he  says,  "  I  grow  old."  If  he  looked  through  the 
coming  days  of  failing  strength  with  forecasting  eyes,  he 
might,  perhaps,  be  discouraged.  The  dulness  of  a  peevish 
old  age — did  that  await  him  ?  But  he  records,  "  Thou 
shalt  answer  for  me,  O  Lord  my  God."  Then  he  passes  on 
to  his  work.  A  Sunday,  which  came  shortly  afterwards, 
he  describes  as  "  a  day  of  rest,"  because  he  had  to  preach 
only  twice !  Towards  the  end  of  the  year  he  records, 
"  My  sight  is  so  decayed  that  I  cannot  well  read  by  candle 
light,"  but  he  adds  with  unconquerable  cheerfulness,  "  I 
can  write  as  well  as  ever." 

On  the  first  day  of  1 790,  Wesley  writes,  "  I  am  now  an 
old  man,  decayed  from  head  to  foot.  My  eyes  are  dim,  my 
right  hand  shakes  much.  I  have  a  lingering  fever  almost 
every  day ;  my  motion  is  weak  and  slow ; "  but,  with 
characteristic  courage,  he  adds,  "  I  can  preach  and  write 
still."  And  he  goes  on  preaching  and  writing,  if  with 
slower  step  and  hand,  yet  with  a  spirit  as  brave,  and  a 
face  as  bright,  as  in  his  prime.  He  wrote  to  Adam  Clarke, 
who  at  that  moment  was  ill,  to  follow  his  doctor's  in- 
structions in  everything  else  except  the  leaving  off 
preaching.  "  I  think,"  he  adds,  "  if  1  had  taken  this  ad- 
vice many  years  since,  I  should  not  now  be  a  living  man." 

Nothing  is  finer  in  Wesley  than  the  cheerfulness  of  his 
spirit,  while  the  tired  body  and  brain  were  thus  yielding 
to  the  arresting  touch  of  time.  The  passage  of  years 
whitened  his  head  and  dimmed  his  signt ;  it  made  his 
feet  stumble,  his  hand  tremble,  and  his  memory  hesitate 
But  all  that  was  noblest  in  Wesley — his  calm  faith,  his 
serene  courage,  his  flame-like  zeal,  his  masterful  will- 
were  exactly  as  in  the  days  of  his  prime.  When  he  had 
to  be  helped  by  friendly  hands  along  the  street  or  into 
the  pulpit  he  would  repeat  with  a  smile  : — 

"  'Tis  time  to  live,  if  I  grow  old." 

While  time  was  thus  breaking  down  even  Wesley's  long- 
enduring  strength  his  younger  brother,  Charles,  had  died, 


502  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

on  March  29,  1788.  He  was  much  the  more  emotional  of 
the  two  great  brothers,  and  death,  as  is  not  uncommon 
with  persons  of  his  temperament,  was  lit  up  by  no  fire  of 
ecstatic  gladness.  As  if  by  some  subtle  law  of  compensa- 
tion, great  joy  in  the  dying  hour  is  sometimes  granted  to 
those  whose  lives  have  been  set  in  a  sombre  key,  and  denied 
to  those  who  have  known  frequent  ecstasies  of  joy  in  the 
days  of  healthy  life.  But  Charles  Wesley's  last  moments, 
if  they  brought  no  raptures,  were  marked  by  a  very  sweet 
and  quiet  peace ;  and  nothing  could  well  be  more  perfect 
as  an  expression  of  Christian  faith  than  the  last  lines  the 
great  singer  of  Methodism  wrote : — 

"  In  age  and  feebleness  extreme, 
Who  shall  a  sinful  worm  redeem  ? 
Jesus,  my  only  hope  Thou  art, 
Strength  of  my  failing  flesh  and  heart. 
Oh,  could  I  catch  a  smile  from  Thee, 
And  drop  into  eternity  !  " 

A  picture,  half  amusing  and  half  pathetic,  is  given  of 
Charles  Wesley  in  his  old  age  by  his  biographer,  Jackson. 
A  little  figure  with  white  hair  and  bent  shoulders,  clad 
against  winter  chills  even  in  the  heat  of  summer,  and 
mounted  on  a  little  horse  grey  with  age,  taking  his  daily 
ride.  As  he  ambled  along  he  would  suddenly  pluck  a  card 
and  a  pencil  from  his  pocket  and  begin  to  write  in  tremb- 
ling shorthand  the  stanzas  which  were  incessantly  setting 
themselves  to  music  in  the  chambers  of  his  brain.  "  Not 
unfrequently,"  says  Jackson,  "  he  has  come  to  the  house 
in  City  Road,  and,  having  left  the  pony  in  the  garden  in 
front,  he  would  enter  crying  out,  '  Fen  and  ink,  pen  and 
ink.'  These  being  supplied,  he  wrote  the  hymn  he  had 
been  composing.  When  this  was  down  he  would  look 
round  on  those  present,  saluting  them  with  much  kind- 
ness, give  out  a  hymn,  and  put  all  in  mind  of  eternity. 
He  was  fond  of  that  stanza  upon  these  occasions  : — 

" '  There  all  the  ship's  company  meet 

Who  sail  with  the  Saviour  beneath, 
With  shouting  each  other  they  greet, 
And  triumph  o'er  sorrow  and  death. 


THE   CLOSING   DAY  503 

The  voyage  of  life's  at  an  end, 

The  mortal  affliction  is  past, 
The  age  that  in  Heaven  they  spend, 

For  ever  and  ever  shall  last.'  " 

Charles  Wesley  is  perhaps  the  greatest  hymn-writer  of 
the  English-speaking  race.  A  poet  by  force  of  natural 
genius,  had  he  never  coine  under  the  sway  of  the  great 
forces  of  religion  he  would  still  have  left  his  mark  on 
English  literature.  Everything  with  him  ran  to  the 
music  of  rhyme  almost  involuntarily ;  but  his  poetry 
became  the  servant  and  instrument  of  religion,  and  found 
its  inspiration  in  the  realm  of  spiritual  emotions.  And 
what  other  poet  would  not  cheerfully  sell  his  fame  to 
make  his  verse  the  channel  of  such  enduring  power  as 
vibrates  in  Charles  Wesley's  hymns !  No  one  who  is 
ignorant  of  the  inner  life  of  Methodism  can  judge  of  the 
value  of  these  hymns.  They  are  the  marching  songs  of 
a  great  spiritual  host,  the  channel  through  which  flows 
Sunday  after  Sunday,  the  worship  of  ten  thousand  con- 
gregations. They  are  sung  to  dying  ears  and  whispered 
by  dying  lips.  But  more  than  even  this  can  be  said  of 
them.  They  are  the  creed  of  Methodism  translated  into 
terms  of  emotion,  and  set  to  music.  So  they  help  to 
explain  that  fine  identity  of  doctrine  which  binds  all  the 
fragments  of  Methodism,  under  every  sky,  and  in  spite  01 
all  diversities  of  organisation,  into  spiritual  unity. 

Charles  Wesley,  in  his  hymns,  thus  rendered  to  Meth- 
odism a  priceless  service :  he  crystallised  into  music  the 
creed  for  which  it  stands. 

Some  creeds,  of  course,  could  not  be  wedded  to  song  or 
translated  into  "  concord  of  sweet  sounds."  Who  can  so 
much  as  imagine  an  Agnostic  hymn-book  !  Thomson,  in 
his  "  City  of  Dreadful  Night,"  has,  it  is  true,  set  Atheism 
to  music ;  but  the  music  is  a  dirge.  What  Keble  did  for 
a  single  school  in  the  Anglican  Church  Charles  Wesley 
did  for  Methodism  as  a  whole.  Nay,  he  drew  out  into 
the  music  of  worship  and  of  aspiration  the  common 
spiritual  consciousness. 

Charles  Wesley,  like  all  the  sons  of  Susannah  Wesley, 
was  a  scholar.  He  had  his  mother's  gift  of  talking  and 
writing  in  clearest  and  tersest  English  ;  and,  if  he  had  not 


504  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

his  brother's  close-knitted  intellect,  he  did  a  work  nearly 
as  lofty  and  quite  as  enduring.  The  epitaph  on  his 
grave,  written  by  his  own  hand,  happily  expresses  his 
character : — 

"  With  poverty  of  spirit  blest, 
Rest,  happy  saint,  in  Jesus'  rest ; 
A  sinner  saved,  through  grace  forgiven, 
Redeemed  from  earth  to  reign  in  heaven ! 
Thy  labours  of  unwearied  love, 
By  thee  forgot,  are  crown'd  above  ; 
Crown'd  through  the  mercy  of  thy  Lord 
With  a  free,  full,  immense  reward  !  " 

After  Mr.  Gladstone's  death  Lord  Salisbury  said  of  him, 
"  He  was  a  great  Christian  ;  "  but  in  his  use  of  that  phrase 
he  was  only  quoting  unconsciously  the  words  spoken  of 
Charles  Wesley  by  one  who  knew  him  best.  "  He  was  a 
great  scholar,  without  ostentation;  a  great  Christian 
without  singularity,  and  a  great  divine  without  the  least 
contempt  for  the  meanest  of  his  brethren." 


CHAPTER  VI 
WESLEY'S  DEATH 

WESLEY  always  insisted  on  judging  religion  by  the  most 
severely  practical  tests.  Life  was  one  test,  and  he  mis- 
trusted profoundly  a  religion  which  did  not  fill  life  for  its 
possessor  with  gladness  and  strength.  But  he  knew  that 
death,  with  its  mystery  and  loneliness,  was  the  last  and 
sorest  test  of  religion.  Did  the  religion  he  preached  make 
that  last  darkness  luminous  ?  Did  it  put  songs  on  dying 
lips  and  gladness  in  dying  hearts  ?  "  The  world,"  wrote 
Wesley,  "may  not  like  our  Methodists,  but  the  world 
cannot  deny  that  they  die  well,"  and  the  religion  which 
teaches  men  to  die  well  may  surely  find  in  that  fact  its 
best  credentials.  Lecky  writes,  with  a  touch  of  genuine 
human  feeling,  when  he  recognises  this  deep  and  sacred 
result  of  the  great  revival.  "Every  religion,"  he  says, 
"  which  is  worthy  of  the  name  must  provide  some  method 
of  consoling  men  in  the  first  agonies  of  bereavement,  some 
support  in  the  extremes  of  pain  and  sickness,  above  all, 
some  stay  in  the  hour  of  death.  It  must  operate,  not 
merely,  or  mainly,  upon  the  strong  and  healthy  reason, 
but  also  hi  the  twilight  of  the  understanding,  in  the  half- 
lucid  intervals  that  precede  death,  when  the  imagination 
is  enfeebled  and  dislocated,  when  all  the  buoyancy  and 
hopefulness  of  nature  is  crushed." 

Lecky's  testimony  to  the  value  of  evangelical  doctrine 
in  that  last  supreme  moment,  when  the  soul  stands  on 
the  borders  of  eternity,  with  the  sounds  of  the  busy  earth 
growing  faint  behind,  is  not,  perhaps,  marked  by  very 
clear  insight,  but  at  least  it  is  emphatic. 

"  The  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,"  he  says,  "  which  diverts 
the  wandering  mind  from  all  painful  and  perplexing  retrospect, 
concentrates  the  imagination  on  one  Sacred  Figure,  and  persuades 
the  sinner  that  the  sins  of  a  life  have,  in  a  moment,  been  effaced, 
has  enabled  thousands  to  encounter  death  with  perfect  calm,  or 

605 


506  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

even  with  vivid  joy,  and  has  consoled  innumerable  mourners  at  a 
time  when  all  the  commonplaces  of  philosophy  would  appear  the 
idlest  of  sounds." 

The  Wesleys  themselves,  it  is  quite  certain,  had  the  art 
of  dying  well.  The  little,  irascible,  impatient  rector  of 
Epworth  himself  never  wore  such  an  aspect  of  heroic 
gladness  as  in  his  dying  moments.  Something  of  prophetic 
speech  crept  to  his  dying  lips.  It  was  as  with  a  ray  of 
sudden  vision  breaking  upon  him  from  the  skies  of  the 
spiritual  world,  that  he  said  to  John  Wesley :  "  The  inward 
witness,  son !  the  inward  witness  ! — this  is  the  proof,  the 
strongest  proof  of  Christianity."  No  prophet  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  no  apostle  and  saint  of  the  New  Testament, 
ever  uttered  more  pregnant  words.  A  strange  light  of 
joy  burned  in  the  last  moments  of  that  troubled  life. 
He  was  asked,  "  Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with 
you  ? "  "  No,  no,  no,"  he  whispered,  "  God  chastens  me 
with  pain,  yea,  all  my  bones  with  strong  pain,  but  I  thank 
Him  for  all,  I  bless  Him  for  all,  I  love  Him  for  all ! " 
Then  as  his  voice  gathered  strength  he  called  upon  his 
children  who  stood  round  him  by  name.  "Think  of 
heaven !  Talk  of  heaven !  All  the  time  is  lost  when  we 
are  not  thinking  of  heaven." 

What  could  be  more  characteristic  of  the  serene  calm 
of  her  spirit  than  Susannah  Wesley's  last  words  to  the 
children  who  stood  beside  her  dying  bed.  John  Wesley 
tells  the  story : — 

"  Her  look  was  calm  and  serene,  and  her  eyes  were  fixed  up- 
ward, as  the  requiem  to  her  departing  soul  was  being  sung  by  her 
children.  It  was  just  four  o'clock.  She  opened  her  eyes  wide,  and 
fixed  them  upwards  for  a  moment.  Then  the  lids  dropped,  and  the 
soul  was  set  at  liberty,  without  one  struggle,  or  groan,  or  sigh. 
We  stood  round  the  bed,  and  fulfilled  her  last  request,  uttered  a 
little  before  she  lost  her  speech, '  Children,  as  soon  as  I  am  released, 
sing  a  psalm  of  praise  to  God.' " 

There  were  many  tragedies,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the 
lives  of  Wesley's  sisters,  but  with  nearly  all  of  them  a 
strange  peace  lay  on  their  dying  beds.  As  an  example, 
John  Wesley's  account  of  the  last  moments  of  Patty, 
perhaps  not  the  cleverest,  but  certainly  the  gayest,  and 
perhaps  the  most  ill-fated  of  the  Epworth  girls,  told  in  an 


WESLEY'S  DEATH  507 

earlier  page,  may  be  recalled.  She  died  with  a  triumphant 
whisper  on  her  lips  :  "  I  have  the  assurance  I  have  so  long 
wanted.  Shout ! " 

Wesley,  himself,  lived  in  such  a  fierce  light  of  publicity 
—he  was  the  central  object  of  love  and  of  admiring 
watchfulness  to  such  multitudes — that  across  more  than 
a  century  we  can  watch,  as  though  we  were  actual  spec- 
tators, the  closing  scene  in  his  life.  The  last  sentence  he 
recorded  in  his  Journal  is  still  preserved :  "  For  upwards 
of  eighty-six  years  I  have  kept  my  accounts  exactly: 
I  will  not  attempt  it  any  longer,  being  satisfied  with 
the  continual  conviction  that  I  save  all  I  can  and  give  all 
I  can ;  that  is,  all  I  have." 

That  very  record — so  noble  in  spirit — gives  pathetic 
evidence  of  decaying  faculties.  The  characters  are  faint, 
broken,  and  scarcely  legible.  His  memory,  as  well  as  his 
hand,  was  failing,  for  there  is  a  mistake  in  the  number  of 
years  given.  Time  for  him  had  plainly  lost  its  perspective. 
But  the  record  itself  is  a  true  reflex  of  the  spirit  in  which 
Wesley  lived. 

His  signature  of  the  minutes  of  the  last  Conference  at 
which  he  was  present  still  remains,  and  yields  evidence 
yet  more  striking,  that  the  pen  was  held  by  strengthless 
fingers.  The  letters  run  irregularly,  and  Wesley  begins 
the  "  W  "  of  his  surname  on  the  "  n"  in  John.  And  yet  a 
fortnight  after  that  broken  and  trembling  signature  was 
written,  he  conducted  in  Bristol  a  service  three  hours 
long,  and  afterwards  preached  in  the  open  air !  He  went 
on,  indeed,  travelling,  preaching,  toiling,  although  he  was 
now  an  image  of  utter  feebleness. 

Henry  Crabbe  Robinson  relates  in  his  diary  how,  in 
October  1790,  four  months  before  Wesley's  death,  he 
heard  him  preach  in  the  great  round  meeting-house  at 
Colchester : — 

"  He  stood  in  a  wide  pulpit,  and  on  each  side  of  him  stood  a 
minister,  and  the  two  held  him  up,  having  their  hands  under  his 
armpits.  His  feeble  voice  was  barely  audible,  but  his  reverend 
countenance,  especially  his  long  white  locks,  formed  a  picture 
never  to  be  forgotten.  There  was  a  vast  crowd  of  lovers  and 
admirers.  It  was  for  the  most  part  a  pantomime,  but  the  panto- 
mime went  to  the  heart.  Of  the  kind,  I  never  saw  anything 
comparable  to  it  in  after-life." 


508  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

Wesley  preached  his  last  sermon  in  the  open  air  at 
Winchelsea,  on  October  7,  1790,  from  the  text  "The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  hand ;  repent  and  believe  the 
Gospel."  He  stood  under  a  great  tree,  with  a  listening 
and  reverent  crowd  about  him ;  and  when  his  trembling 
lips  had  uttered  the  benediction,  almost  the  last  syllables 
of  the  greatest  Christian  ministry  the  English  race  has 
seen  were  spoken.  And  at  least  a  touch  of  the  strange 
yet  familiar  power  of  Wesley's  preaching  was  in  that  last 
open-air  sermon.  "  The  tears  of  the  people/'  says  one 
who  was  present,  "  flowed  in  torrents." 

The  brave,  eager  spirit  within  the  tired  body  was, 
however,  still  planning  new  toils.  On  February  6, 
Wesley  wrote  a  letter,  saying,  "On  Wednesday,  March  17, 
I  purpose,  if  God  permit,  to  come  from  Gloucester  to 
Worcester,  and  on  Thursday,  i8th,  to  Stourport."  The 
letter,  by  accident,  was  not  sent.  Wesley  discovered  it 
amongst  his  papers,  three  weeks  afterwards,  and,  with 
a  touch  of  his  characteristic  method,  he  endorsed  it: 
"  February  28.  This  morning  I  found  this  in  my  bureau." 
These  are  the  last  words  that  Wesley's  pen  ever  wrote 
Three  days  after  he  was  dead. 

Through  all  these  weeks  he  was  conscious  that  he  stood 
on  the  threshold  of  eternity.  He  closed  each  service  he 
held  with  that  fine  verse  of  one  of  his  brother's  hymns  :— 

"  O  that  without  a  lingering  groan 
I  may  the  welcome  word  receive, 
My  body  with  my  charge  laid  down, 
And  cease  at  once  to  work  and  live." 

He  had  one  brief,  golden,  pathetic  counsel  with  which 
he  ended  every  interview,  and  every  meeting  with  his 
societies.  It  was  the  Apostle  John's  great  message, 
"  Little  children,  love  one  another." 

On  February  i,  1791,  he  wrote  his  last  letter  to  America. 
His  dying  message  ran :  "  Declare  to  all  men  that  the 
Methodists  are  one  people  in  all  the  world,  and  that  it  is 
their  full  determination  so  to  continue — 

"  '  Though  mountains  rise  and  oceans  roll 
To  sever  us  in  vain.' " 


WESLEY'S  DEATH  509 

On  February  22  he  preached  his  last  discourse  in  City 
Road  Chapel.  His  very  last  sermon  was  preached  in  a 
magistrate's  room  at  Leatherhead,  on  February  23.  The 
last  letter  he  ever  penned  was  the  immortal  letter  to 
Wilberforce  against  slavery. 

The  best  —  practically,  indeed,  the  only  —  account  of 
Wesley's  dying  moments  is  that  given  by  Bessie  Ritchie, 
a  much-loved  and  trusted  member  of  his  household,  who 
had  been  his  close  companion  and  attendant  for  some 
months.  A  woman's  vigilant  sense,  and  quick  and  tender 
sympathy,  unite  in  her  narrative  to  give  us  a  story  of 
unmatched  simplicity  and  pathos.  That  story  is  a  record 
of  one  of  the  most  perfect  triumphs  over  death,  with  its 
mystery  and  whispering  terrors,  a  human  spirit  ever 
achieved. 

"  Patience  and  an  easy  death  "  was  what  Charles  Wesley 
prayed  for  again  and  again  as  the  last  moments  drew  on ; 
and  these  he  had.  But  in  his  dying  moments  the  clear, 
exultant  note  of  triumph  is  not  very  audible.  Through  his 
greater  brother's  dying  accents,  however,  there  runs,  clear 
and  deep  and  loud,  the  music  of  triumph.  The  scene  is 
rich  with  golden  sayings;  words  which  are  sometimes  a 
reaffirmation  of  the  great  truths  he  preached  in  his  life, 
as  though  the  preacher  were  studying  them  afresh  when 
set  against  the  great  horizons  of  death.  Sometimes  they 
represent  sudden  gleams  of  strange  vision,  such  vision  as 
breaks  on  the  dying  eyes  of  God's  saints  from  unseen 
worlds.  Sometimes  these  sayings  are  exultant  utterances 
of  pure  and  simple  gladness. 

On  Friday,  February  18,  he  spent  the  day  in  reading 
and  writing,  and  preached  at  Chelsea  at  night  from  the 
words,  "  The  king's  business  requireth  haste  " ;  but  he  had 
to  pause  again  and  again  during  his  sermon,  till  his  failing 
voice  gathered  strength.  It  was  clear  on  Saturday  that 
fever  was  kindling  in  his  wasted  veins,  but  still  he  wrote 
and  read  and  worked.  On  Sunday,  the  2Oth,  he  was 
unable  to  preach,  and  slept  for  many  hours.  On  Monday 
he  dined  at  Twickenham.  On  Tuesday  the  indomitable 
old  man  preached  at  City  Road,  and  on  Wednesday  at 
Leatherhead.  "Seek  ye  the  Lord  while  He  may  be 
found,"  ran  his  text.  It  was  the  great  preacher's  last 
message. 


510  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY        t 

He  visited  a  trusted  friend,  Mr.  Woolf,  at  Balham,  on 
Thursday,  but  on  returning  to  his  house  at  City  Road,  on 
Friday,  the  look  on  his  face,  the  manner  in  which  he 
crept  with  stumbling  feet  into  the  house,  showed  he  was 
stricken.  He  struggled  with  difficulty  upstairs  into  his 
room,  and  sat  down  in  his  chair.  Eager  Bessie  Ritchie 
would  run  for  refreshments ;  but  Wesley  sent  every  one 
out  of  the  room,  saying  he  was  not  to  be  interrupted  for 
any  one,  for  half-an-hour,  "  not  even  if  Joseph  Bradford 
came." 

That  half-hour  of  loneliness  has  a  strange  pathos  about 
it.  Wesley  knew  that  earth  was  ending,  that  death  was 
near;  and  the  solitary  spirit,  standing  on  the  edge  of 
eternity,  would  brook,  for  the  moment,  no  earthly  com- 
panionship. He  would  talk  with  God  alone,  as  much 
alone — and  yet  as  little  alone — as  Moses  on  the  hilltop 
in  Moab. 

Dr.  Whitehead,  Wesley's  trusted  friend  and  physician 
was  sent  for.  "Doctor,"  said  the  dying  man,  with  a 
pleasant  smile,  as  the  physician  entered  the  room,  "  they 
are  more  afraid  than  hurt."  The  next  day,  however, 
Joseph  Bradford  sent  a  hurried  note  to  each  preacher 
in  London.  "  Mr.  Wesley  is  very  ill,"  it  ran,  "  pray,  pray, 

Eray."    All  Saturday  Wesley  slept,  but  on  Sunday  morning 
e  rose,  sat  in  his  chair  with  a  cheerful  face,  drank  a 
cup  of  tea,  and  repeated  to  those  about  him,  with  smiling 
lips,  his  brother's  verse : — 

"Till  glad  I  lay  this  body  down, 
Thy  servant,  Lord,  attend  ; 
And,  oh,  my  life  of  mercy  crown 
With  a  triumphant  end." 

Speech  presently  failed  him.  "Speak  to  me,"  he  whis- 
pered to  those  about  him.  "  I  cannot  speak."  In  a  little 
while  he  gathered  strength  again.  Eight  years  before, 
at  Bristol,  he  was  ill,  and  believed  himself  to  be  dying, 
and  he  then  said  to  his  attendant,  Joseph  Bradford : — 

"  I  have  been  reflecting  on  my  past  life  :  I  have  been  wandering 
up  and  down  between  fifty  and  sixty  years,  endeavouring,  in  my 
poor  way,  to  do  a  little  good  to  my  fellow-creatures ;  and,  now  it 
is  probable  that  here  are  but  a  few  steps  between  me  and  death, 


WESLEY'S  DEATH  511 

and  what  have  I  to  trust  to  for  salvation?  I  can  see  nothing 
which  I  have  done  or  suffered,  that  will  bear  looking  at.  I  have 
no  other  plea  than  this : — 

"  I  the  chief  of  sinners  am, 
But  Jesus  died  for  me." 

And  as  he  sat  in  his  chair,  in  the  house  in  City  Road, 
his  memory  went  back  to  that  scene.  "  There  is  no 
need,"  he  whispered,  "for  more  than  what  I  said  at 
Bristol.  I  said  then : — 

"  I  the  chief  of  sinners  am, 
But  Jesus  died  for  me." 

Later  in  the  day,  after  lying  silent  for  some  time,  as  if 
meditating,  he  repeated:  "How  necessary  it  is  for  every 
one  to  be  on  the  right  foundation,"  and  once  more  he 
recited  the  lines,  his  watchword  in  the  dark  valley : — 

"  I  the  chief  of  sinners  am, 
But  Jesus  died  for  me." 

He  slept  for  a  while,  and  then  awakened,  and  those  in 
the  room  heard  him  say,  in  a  low,  distinct  voice,  "  There 
is  no  way  into  the  holiest  but  by  the  blood  of  Jesus."  It 
was  as  though,  consciously  drawing  near  to  that  "  holiest," 
he  paused  for  a  moment  to  recall  the  great  and  divine 
act  of  redemption  which  constituted  his  right  to  enter. 
All  through  Wesley's  dying  moments,  indeed,  we  can  see 
what  is  the  faith,  stripped  of  all  merely  secondary  truths, 
which  stands  the  supreme  test  of  the  last  hour. 

On  Tuesday,  March  i,  Wesley  was  asked  if  he  suffered 
pain.  "  No,"  he  replied,  and  then  broke  into  singing  :— 

"  All  glory  to  God  in  the  sky, 
And  peace  upon  earth  be  restored." 

He  sang  two  verses  of  that  fine  hymn,  till  his  breath 
failed  and  his  voice  was  gone.  "I  want  to  write,"  he 
whispered.  A  pen  was  put  into  his  hand,  but  the  fingers 
could  not  hold  it.  "  Let  me  write  for  you,"  said  Bessie 
Ritchie,  "  tell  me  what  you  wish  to  say."  "  Nothing," 
was  the  reply,  "  but  that  God  is  with  us." 

He  insisted  on  getting  up,  and  while  they  were  arrang- 


512  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

ing  his  clothes  his  voice  came  back  to  him,  and  he  broke 
out  singing  with  a  strength  and  fulness  which  astonished 
those  in  the  room.  He  could  preach  no  longer,  write  no 
longer,  think  and  pray  no  longer.  But  he  could  still 
sing !  His  failing  voice  ran  into  music  as  if  by  some 
eager  and  resistless  impulse.  It  was  the  last  verse  he 
had  given  out  in  City  Koad  Chapel,  the  exultant  stanza : 

"  I'll  praise  my  Maker  while  I've  breath, 
And  when  my  voice  is  lost  in  death 

Praise  shall  employ  my  nobler  powers. 
My  days  of  praise  shall  ne'er  be  past 
While  life  and  thought  and  being  last, 
Or  immortality  endures." 

It  was  Wesley's  swan-song.  Presently,  as  he  sat  in  the 
chair,  he  tried  to  sing  again : — 

"  To  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost, 
Who  sweetly  all  agree " 

and  then  the  trembling  voice  failed.  Panting  for  breath, 
he  said,  "  Now  we  have  done,  let  us  go."  He  went  back 
to  bed,  and,  lying  there,  bade  those  about  him  pray  and 
praise.  He  gave  composed  directions  for  his  funeral,  and 
after  lying  silent  a  little,  he  whispered,  with  kindling  face, 
"  The  best  of  all  is,  God  is  with  us."  Then,  lifting  his  hand 
as  though  to  wave  it,  he  cried  once  more,  like  a  soldier 
exulting  in  the  moment  of  victory,  "  THE  BEST  OF  ALL 
IS,  GOD  IS  WITH  US."  One  of  the  most  saintly  women 
of  that  first  generation  of  Methodists,  Hester  Ann  Rogers, 
came  into  the  room  with  her  husband.  "  Who  are  these  ? " 
asked  Wesley.  "Sir,"  said  Rogers,  "we  are  come  to 
rejoice  with  you;  you  are  going  to  receive  your  crown." 
"  It  is  the  Lord's  doing,"  answered  the  dying  man,  "  and 
marvellous  in  our  eyes." 

All  through  the  night  broken  accents  of  praise  and 
adoration  fell  from  his  lips.  "The  clouds  drop  fatness," 
he  said.  "  The  Lord  is  with  us,  the  God  of  Jacob  is  our 
refuge,"  "I'll  praise — I'll  praise- 
On  Wednesday  morning,  at  ten  o'clock,  while  a  group 
of  faithful  and  weeping  companions  stood  round  his  bed, 
and  Joseph  Bradford  was  in  the  act  of  praying,  Wesley 
whispered,  "  Farewell,"  and  his  spirit  passed  away.  Joseph 


WESLEY'S  DEATH  513 

Bradford,  at  that  moment,  was  repeating  the  words,  "  Lift 
up  your  heads,  O  ye  gates ;  and  be  ye  lift  up,  ye  ever- 
lasting doors."  Then  those  in  the  room  broke  into 
singing : — 

"  Waiting  to  receive  thy  spirit, 
Lo,  the  Saviour  stands  above, 
Shows  the  purchase  of  His  merit, 
Reaches  out  the  crown  of  love." 

Death  is  the  common,  inevitable  experience,  an  ex- 
perience clouded  in  mystery,  and  for  the  natural  spirit 
dark  with  vague  alarms.  It  is  easy,  in  some  moods,  to 
ignore  death ;  to  forget  its  existence ;  to  face  it  with 
recklessness.  It  is  possible  to  drift  into  that  unknown  sea 
with  failing  senses  and  no  sign  of  terror.  But  to  die  clear- 
eyed  and  glad,  as  Wesley  did ;  to  die  with  trembling  lips 
breaking  into  praise,  and  the  undying  spirit  exultant  with 
triumph ;  to  put  to  that  last  and  uttermost  test  of  death 
all  the  beliefs  of  life,  and  find  that  they  are  true — who 
does  not  envy  an  experience  like  this  ? 

The  keen,  swift,  unfaltering  logic  which  Wesley  used  to 
defend  the  teaching  and  beliefs  of  his  life,  is  not  more 
triumphant  and  final  than  the  logic  hidden  in  the  peace 
of  his  death. 


2  K 


CHAPTER    VII 
WESLEY'S  CRITICS 

IT  is  interesting — it  may  serve,  indeed,  to  correct  the 
over-estimate  of  uncritical  admirers — to  note  the  aspect 
Wesley  wears  when  contemplated  through  unfriendly 
spectacles.  Of  the  purely  domestic  biographies  of  Wesley 
— lives  written  by  his  own  followers — no  word  need  be 
said  here ;  but  Wesley  has  been  unfortunate  in  what  may 
be  called  his  outside  biographers.  To  translate  such  a 
career  as  his  into  purely  literary  terms  is  a  difficult  task ; 
and  an  adequate  literary  representation  of  the  man  and 
his  work  is  not  easily  discoverable. 

Southey's  "  Life,"  it  is  true,  is  a  bit  of  careful  workman- 
ship, showing  both  skill  and  industry.  But  there  is  a 
fatal  breach  of  spiritual  sympathy  betwixt  Southey  and 
his  subject.  He  misreads  Wesley's  character  completely, 
and  discovers  in  a  vulgar  love  of  power  the  explanation 
of  Wesley's  amazing  toils !  Miss  Wedgwood's  "  John 
Wesley"  has  incomparably  more  spiritual  insight  than 
Southey's  "Life."  If  Miss  Wedgwood  has  not  philo- 
sophic penetration,  quick,  womanly  intuition  is  a  very 
adequate  substitute  for  it.  But  her  work  deals  inade- 
quately with  the  facts  of  Wesley's  career;  it  does  not 
pretend  to  be  either  a  history  or  a  biography.  Isaac 
Taylor's  "  Methodism "  has  still  less  of  either  history  or 
biography  than  Miss  Wedgwood's  work ;  it  is  a  mere  tangle 
of  misty  generalisations.  Canon  Overton's  "  Wesley  "  has 
about  it  a  pleasant  honesty  and  directness ;  but  it  is  an 
attempt  to  button  up  John  Wesley  and  his  whole  work 
in  an  Anglican  cassock.  Snell's  "  Wesley "  is  a  very  in- 
adequate monograph.  It  has  neither  facts  enough  for  a 
biography,  nor  insight  enough  for  a  philosophy. 

Leslie  Stephen,  in  his  "  History  of  English  Thought  in 
the  Eighteenth  Century,"  gives  much  space  to  Wesley 
and  the  Revival,  and  he  is,  in  some  respects,  the  most 

514 


WESLEY'S  CRITICS  515 

formidable  critic  both  of  the  man  and  the  movement. 
He  has  a  wide  knowledge  of  the  period,  though  his 
knowledge  has  both  the  merits  and  the  defects  which 
mark  a  barrister's  knowledge  of  his  brief.  It  is  fluent, 
but  external.  And  Stephen  makes  no  attempt  to  see 
the  landscape,  and  to  set  Wesley  and  his  work  in  true 
historical  perspective ;  yet  his  authority  as  a  critic  makes 
his  estimate  impressive  for  the  average  reader. 

On  some  serious  grounds,  of  course,  Sir  Leslie  Stephen 
may  be  challenged  in  advance,  as  a  competent  judge  of 
Wesley  and  his  work.  He  is  disqualified  for  that  office 
by  his  own  deep-seated  prepossessions.  He  sets  out,  for 
example,  by  dismissing  the  validity  of  spiritual  phenomena 
from  the  realm  of  intellectual  respect.  This  is  as  though 
somebody  undertook  a  criticism  of  Newton's  "  Principia," 
and  set  out  by  a  quarrel  with  mathematics.  Stephen, 
too,  judges  the  Revival  of  the  eighteenth  century  by 
purely  literary  tests,  and  as  a  contribution  to  what  he 
calls  philosophy.  This,  again,  is  as  though  one  judged  a 
specific  for  the  plague  by  the  colour  of  the  label  on  the 
bottle  which  holds  it. 

In  spite  of  himself,  however,  Leslie  Stephen  is  betrayed 
again  and  again  into  spacious  compliments  to  Wesley 
and  his  work.  "  Wesleyanism "  he  calls  "  the  most  im- 
portant phenomenon  of  the  century."  Of  Wesley  him- 
self, he  says  that  "no  such  leader  of  men  appeared  in 
the  eighteenth  century";  and  yet  it  is  the  century  of 
Maryborough ;  of  the  two  Pitts ;  of  Olive,  and  of  Warren 
Hastings ;  of  Voltaire ;  of  Frederick  the  Great,  and  of 
George  Washington !  Stephen  is  obviously  moved  to  a 
degree  ho  is  reluctant  to  confess  by  admiration  of  Law — 
with  his  profound  spirituality,  his  clear  vision  of  eternal 
things ;  but  he  thinks  Wesley  the  more  commanding 
figure.  "  Lawr,"  he  says,  "  retired  from  the  world  ;  Wesley 
sought  to  subdue  the  world." 

Yet  Leslie  Stephen's  compliments  are  spoiled  by 
blunders  nothing  less  than  wonderful  in  a  man  so  able — 
blunders  which  argue  a  sort  of  intellectual,  as  well  as 
spiritual,  blindness.  Thus  he  says  that  Wesley's  "  amaz- 
ing soundness  of  health"  explains  the  radiant  character 
of  his  religion !  It  would  be  difficult  to  discover  a  more 
complete  example  of  the  inversion  of  cause  and  effect 


516  WESLEY    AND    HIS    CENTURY 

than  this.  It  is  like  saying  that  the  deep7rooted  strength 
of  the  oak  is  due  to  the  acorns  which  hang  from  its 
branches.  Wesley's  theology,  again,  he  traces  to  non- 
theological  roots — a  performance  which  shows  that  Stephen 
missed  the  essential  keynote  of  Wesley's  character.  He 
says,  for  example,  that  he  is  an  Arminian,  not  on  any 
grounds  of  reason,  but  simply  "from  the  instinct  of  a 
born  ruler  of  men."  His  belief  at  this  point  is  not  built 
on  the  authority  of  Scripture,  or  on  the  processes  of 
philosophy,  but  only  on  "a  keen  sense  of  practical 
efficiency."  "He  is  an  Arminian  that  he  may  preach 
repentance." 

Such  a  travesty  of  Wesley's  sermon  on  "  Free  Grace " 
seems  to  prove  that  Stephen  had  never  read  it.  Leslie 
Stephen  indeed  betrays  an  uneasy  consciousness  that  he 
is  wading  in  waters  too  deep  for  his  sounding,  and  dealing 
with  matters  beyond  the  categories  of  his  logic.  He 
confesses,  for  example,  that  when  criticising  Law's  writ- 
ings, he  is  conscious  that  he  somewhat  resembles  Mephis- 
topheles  in  the  cathedral ! 

The  summary  of  the  teaching  of  Wesley  and  his 
helpers  offered  by  Leslie  Stephen  certainly  represents  a 
curious  completeness  of  misconception.  He  undertakes 
to  put  himself  at  the  standpoint  of  the  preachers  of  the 
Revival : — 

"  What,  they  seemed  to  have  tacitly  inquired,  is  the  argument 
which  will  induce  an  ignorant  miner  or  a  small  tradesman  in  a 
country  town  to  give  up  drinking  and  cock-fighting  1  The  obvious 
answer  was  :  Tell  him  that  he  is  going  straight  to  hell-fire  to  be 
tortured  for  all  eternity.  Preach  that  consoling  truth  to  him  long 
enough,  and  vigorously  enough,  and  in  a  large  enough  crowd  of 
his  fellows,  and  he  may  be  thrown  into  a  fit  of  excitement  that 
may  form  a  crisis  in  his  life.  Represent  God  to  him  by  the 
image  most  familiar  to  his  imagination  as  a  severe  creditor  Who 
won't  excuse  a  farthing  of  the  debt,  and  Christ  as  the  Benefactor 
Who  has  freely  offered  to  clear  the  score.  The  doctrine  may  not 
be  very  refined  or  philosophical ;  but  it  is  sufficiently  congenial  to 
the  vague  beliefs  implanted  in  his  mind  by  tradition,  to  give  a 
leverage  for  your  appeals." l 

Now,  almost  every  sentence  in  Wesley's  "Appeal  to 
Men  of  Reason  and  Religion"  refutes  that  burlesque  of 

1  "  History  of  European  Thought,"  vol.  ii.  p.  421. 


WESLEY'S  CRITICS  517 

the  teaching  of  the  great  Revival.  We  have  only  to  put 
beside  Stephen's  travesty  Wesley's  own  statement  of  the 
theology  he  and  his  helpers  taught  to  see  this. 

"  We  see  on  every  side  (wrote  Wesley),  either  men  of  no  religion 
at  all,  or  men  of  a  lifeless,  formal  religion.  We  are  grieved  at 
the  sight,  and  should  greatly  rejoice,  if  by  any  means  we  might 
convince  some,  that  there  is  a  better  religion  to  be  attained,  a 
religion  worthy  of  God  that  gave  it.  And  this  we  conceive  to  be 
no  other  than  love ;  the  love  of  God  and  of  all  mankind,  the 
loving  God  with  all  our  heart,  and  soul,  and  strength,  as  having 
first  loved  us,  as  the  Fountain  of  all  the  good  we  have  received, 
and  of  all  we  ever  hope  to  enjoy ;  and  the  loving  every  soul  which 
God  hath  made,  every  man  on  earth,  as  our  own  soul. 

"  This  love  we  believe  to  be  the  medicine  of  life,  the  never-failing 
remedy,  for  all  the  evils  of  a  disordered  world,  for  all  the  miseries 
and  vices  of  men.  Wherever  this  is,  there  are  virtue  and  happiness, 
going  hand  in  hand.  There  is  humbleness  of  mind,  gentleness, 
long-suffering,  the  whole  image  of  God,  and,  at  the  same  time,  a 
peace  that  passeth  all  understanding,  and  joy  unspeakable  and  full 
of  glory. 

"  '  Eternal  sunshine  of  the  spotless  mind  ; 

Each  prayer  accepted,  and  each  wish  resigned  : 

Desires  composed,  affections  ever  even, 

Tears  that  delight,  and  sighs  that  waft  to  heaven.' 

"This  religion  we  long  to  see  established  in  the  world,  a  religion 
of  love,  and  joy,  and  peace,  having  its  seat  in  the  heart,  in  the 
inmost  soul,  but  ever  showing  itself,  by  its  fruits,  continually 
springing  forth  not  only  in  all  innocence  (for  love  worketh  no  ill 
to  his  neighbour),  but  likewise  in  every  kind  of  beneficence, 
spreading  virtue  and  happiness  all  around  it. 

"  We  declare  it  to  all  mankind :  for  we  desire  not  that  others 
should  wander  out  of  the  way,  as  we  have  done  before  them  ;  but 
rather  that  they  may  profit  by  our  loss,  that  they  may  go  (though 
we  did  not,  having  then  no  man  to  guide  us)  the  straight  way  to 
the  religion  of  love,  even  by  faith." l 

These  sentences  are  sufficient  to  prove  that  looking  at 
the  teaching  of  the  Revival  through  Leslie  Stephen's 
account  of  it,  is  like  contemplating  a  landscape  through  a 
bit  of  smoked  glass. 

This,   again,  is  how  Leslie   Stephen,  on  philosophical 

1  "Appeal,"  pp.  i,  2. 


518  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

grounds,  undertakes  to  explain  Methodism,  and  to  predict 
its  failure : — 

"The  true  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  growth  of  a  great 
population  outside  the  rusty  ecclesiastical  machinery.  The  refuse 
thus  cast  aside  took  fire  by  spontaneous  combustion.  The  great 
masses  of  the  untaught  and  uncared  for  inherited  a  tradition  of 
the  old  theology.  As  they  multiplied  and  developed,  the  need  of 
some  mode  of  satisfying  the  religious  instincts  became  more  press- 
ing ;  and,  as  the  pure  sceptics  had  nothing  to  say,  and  the  official 
clergy  could  only  say  something  in  which  they  did  not  believe, 
Wesley's  resuscitation  of  the  old  creed  gave  just  the  necessary  im- 
pulse. Its  want  of  any  direct  connection  with  that  speculative 
movement  could  not  stifle  it,  but  it  condemned  it  to  barrenness. 
Wesleyanism  in  the  eighteenth  century  represents  heat  without 
light — a  blind  protest  of  the  masses,  and  a  vague  feeling  after 
some  satisfaction  to  the  instinct  which  ends  only  in  a  recrudescence 
of  obsolete  ideas." 1 

Now,  as  a  scientific  interpretation  of  a  great  historical 
phenomenon,  this  explanation  is  nothing  less  than  childish. 
The  spiritual  movement  which,  to  borrow  the  words  of 
one  of  the  best  of  English  historians,  "reformed  our 
prisons,  abolished  the  slave-trade,  taught  clemency  to  our 
penal  laws,  gave  the  first  impulse  to  our  popular  educa- 
tion," is,  when  translated  into  the  terms  of  Leslie  Stephen's 
philosophy,  nothing  more  than  a  certain  accidental  "  ac- 
cumulation of  human  refuse  "  taking  fire  by  "  spontaneous 
combustion."  This  is  like  offering  the  burning  of  a  dung- 
heap  as  an  explanation  of  the  rise  in  the  Eastern  skies 
of  some  great  planet. 

Such  a  misreading  of  plain  English,  on  the  part  of  a 
critic  so  able,  and  in  purpose  so  honest,  is  nothing  less 
than  a  literary  curiosity.  But  how  can  a  man,  himself 
without  spiritual  faith,  either  understand  or  interpret  a 
movement  so  intensely  spiritual  as  that  of  which  Wesley 
is  the  symbol?  Leslie  Stephen's  sceptical  assumptions 
seem  to  bring  with  them  a  sort  of  paralysis  of  the  critical 
faculties. 

Stephen,  for  example,  undertakes  to  describe  and  assess 
Wesley's  great  treatise  on  "  Original  Sin."  Wesley  here 
is  not  dealing  with  a  theological  abstraction — a  puzzle  in 
logic,  a  problem  in  philosophy.  He  is  discussing  the 

1  "  History  of  European  Thought,"  vol.  ii.  p.  424. 


WESLEY'S  CRITICS  519 

great  central  fact  in  human  history — the  existence  of 
moral  evil ;  a  fact  whose  witness  lies  deep  in  human 
consciousness  itself,  and  whose  record  is  written  on  every 
page  of  the  world's  story.  Leslie  Stephen  discovers  in 
the  treatise  nothing  but  "a  wearisome  wrangle  over  texts 
with  little  reference  to  the  deeper  philosophical  grounds 
of  the  problem." 

Now,  the  Bible,  on  any  reading  of  its  character,  is  the 
great  spiritual  text-book  of  the  nuinan  race.  No  other 
book  pierces  so  deeply  into  the  very  heart  of  the  great 
mystery  of  human  life — the  existence  of  evil.  But  Leslie 
Stephen  assumes  in  advance  that  the  Bible  on  this  subject 
is  out  of  court.  Any  reference  to  it  may  be  dismissed  as 
"  a  wearisome  wrangle  over  texts."  The  problem  is  purely 
philosophical,  and  is  capable  of  being  dealt  with  only  by 
philosophers;  and  by  philosophers  whose  chief  qualifica- 
tion lies  in  the  fact  that  they  reject  the  Bible !  Theo- 
logians do  not  deserve  so  much  as  a  hearing  in  such  a 
cause.  Now,  this  is  as  if  one  contended  that  any  refer- 
ence to  the  Nautical  Almanac  in  the  business  of  naviga- 
tion must  be  an  impertinence ! 

The  vice  of  all  such  criticism  of  Wesley  and  the  Revival 
is  to  be  found  in  the  silent  assumption  that  the  intellect, 
in  the  only  form  deserving  of  respect,  must  be  always  on 
the  side  of  scepticism.  Stephen  describes,  for  example, 
the  attitude  towards  Christianity  which  the  general 
human  mind  took  in  the  eighteenth  century.  "  The  in- 
tellectual," he  says,  "became  sceptical  with  Hume;  the 
imaginative  turned  mystics  with  Law ;  while  those  in 
whom  the  moral  sense  and  a  keen  eye  for  the  facts  of 
life  were  most  strongly  developed,  sympathised  with 
Wesley."  But  the  two  later  groups  are  silently  dismissed 
from  the  "intellectual"  realm,  and  the  authority  of 
"  intellect "  is  left  with  the  sceptics !  And  underlying  all 
Leslie  Stephen's  criticisms  of  the  Revival,  and  vitiating 
them,  is  the  assumption,  marked  by  an  arrogance  so 
complete  that  it  is  unconscious  of  itself,  that  literature 
is  more  than  religion,  and  nobler ;  that  the  intellect  is 
higher  than  the  conscience ;  that  to  write  a  book  is  a 
better  title  to  human  fame  than  to  reform  a  nation  ;  that 
what  cannot  be  expressed  in  literary  terms,  and  measured 
by  literary  tests,  has  no  title  to  enduring  remembrance. 


520  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Fletcher  of  Madeley,  and  men  of  his  type,  are  to  be 
"  pitied,"  because,  "  while  discussing  matters  which  seem 
to  them  of  importance" — such  matters  as  sin  and  its 
remedy ;  the  soul  and  its  relation  to  God ;  life  and  death 
and  judgment  to  come — "  they  are  really  without  any 
adequate  system  of  philosophy."  They  are  unconscious, 
indeed,  that  "  a  philosophy "  is  necessary ;  so  they  are 
dismissed  as  belonging  to  the  mere  "  side-currents  of  the 
world's  thought " ;  while  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Gibbon,  and 
Hume  "  belong  to  the  main  stream  of  European  thought." 
Wesley's  system,  we  are  assured,  is  pre-doomed  to  barren- 
ness, because  it  "  has  no  philosophic  basis." 

And  yet  Stephen  admits  Wesley  "founded  a  body 
which,  eighty  years  after  his  death,  could  boast  of 
12,000,000  adherents,  and  whose  reaction  upon  other 
bodies  is  fully  as  important  as  its  direct  influence."  And 
what  philosopher,  it  may  be  asked,  has  ever  performed 
such  a  miracle  !  Now,  if  Wesley  had  only  spent  his  life, 
and  employed  his  intense  industry,  in  spinning  some 
shining  web  of  "  philosophy,"  he  might  have  found  a 
place  beside  Hume  or  Gibbon  or  Voltaire !  Instead  of 
wandering  in  such  high  realms,  Wesley  kept  to  the 
common  earth.  His  aim,  as  Leslie  Stephen  puts  it,  was 
"  to  stamp  out  vice,  to  suppress  drinking  and  debauchery, 
to  show  men  the  plain  path  to  heaven,  and  force  them 
into  it  by  intelligible  threats  and  promises."  "  He  differs," 
Stephen  goes  on  to  explain,  "  from  the  ordinary  moralists 
in  the  strong  conviction  that  a  mere  collection  of  good 
precepts  will  never  change  men's  lives  without  an  appeal 
to  their  feelings  and  their  imagination." 

Wesley  himself  might  have  accepted  the  statement  that 
his  aim  was  "  to  stamp  out  vice,"  and  "  to  show  men  the 
plain  path  to  heaven";  but  he  would  have  protested 
vehemently  that  he  did  not  find  the  energy  which  was 
to  cleanse  human  life  in  any  appeal  to  the  mere  feeling 
and  imagination  of  his  hearers.  He  found  that  healing 
force  in  quite  another  realm;  in  the  spiritual  energies 
which  stream  from  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  in  the 
saving  offices  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  And  working  with  these 
sublime  forces  he  did  "stamp  out  vice"  in  vast  multi- 
tudes. He  did  this  for  more  than  fifty  years ;  did  it  on 
a  scale  without  precedent  in  English  history,  and  did  it 


WESLEY'S  CRITICS  521 

in  a  fashion  so  enduring,  that  to-day  great  Churches  in 
every  land  where  the  English  tongue  is  spoken  bear  his 
name.  Suppose  Hume  or  Gibbon  had  been  set  this  task ! 

This  whole  criticism  of  Wesley  and  his  work,  like  nearly 
every  other  literary  explanation  of  the  man  and  his  move- 
ment yet  attempted,  is  utterly  vitiated  by  the  false  scale 
of  values  on  which  it  proceeds.  The  greatest  forces  in 
human  life,  however,  are  not  philosophical  theories,  but 
moral  impulses.  And  the  final  standard  for  men  and 
theories  is  not  intellectual,  but  ethical. 

Which  was  the  nobler  figure  —  the  figure  which  re- 
presents the  central  stream  of  European  thought — Robert 
Raikes,  the  Gloucestershire  banker,  who  invented  Sunday- 
schools;  or  Rousseau,  stealing  through  the  darkness  of 
a  street  in  Paris  to  drop  his  fifth  illegitimate  child  into 
the  receiving  -  box  of  a  foundling  hospital,  and  then 
hastening  back  to  add  a  new  paragraph  to  his  Contrat 
Social  ? 

It  is  possible  to  put  side  by  side,  as  opposing  types, 
men  who  were  contemporaries  in  the  eighteenth  century : 
Hume,  weaving  metaphysical  arguments  to  prove  mir- 
acles impossible,  and  Silas  Told,  the  prisoner's  friend, 
actually  working  spiritual  miracles  in  the  cells  of  New- 
gate ;  Gibbon,  writing  those  famous  chapters  hi  his  great 
history  for  the  destruction  of  Christian  faith,  and  Law, 
Gibbon's  tutor,  making  Christianity  credible,  on  Gibbon's 
own  testimony,  by  his  life ;  Rousseau,  writing  sentimental 
discourses,  while  abandoning  his  own  children,  and 
Howard,  spending  his  life  in  visiting  the  prisons  of 
Europe,  and  giving  humanity  a  new  authority  over  the 
conscience  of  the  race  by  his  example.  These  are  figures 
in  picturesque  opposition  to  each  other;  and  literature 
reserves  its  highest  honours  for  one  set — for  Hume  and 
Gibbon,  for  Voltaire  and  Rousseau !  Leslie  Stephen  de- 
clares that  they,  and  they  only,  "belong  to  the  central 
stream  of  European  thought." 

But  these  judgments  proceed,  it  must  be  repeated,  on 
a  false  scale  of  values.  Life  is  more  than  speculation  ; 
morality  is  greater  than  literature.  To  save  a  drunkard 
from  his  vice,  to  make  a  harlot  chaste,  a  wife-beater 
gentle,  a  thief  honest;  to  cleanse  a  city  slum,  to  dry  a 
widow's  tears,  to  shelter  a  child's  helplessness,  this  is  not 


522  WESLEY    AND    HIS   CENTURY 

merely  a  better  contribution  to  the  world's  life  than  to 
write  the  most  ingenious  philosophical  treatise,  or  to 
teach  words  to  march  in  rhyme  through  the  stanzas  of 
a  great  poem.  It  represents  a  loftier  order  of  forces. 

Human  judgment,  to  be  absolutely  true,  must  reflect 
the  divine  judgment.  To  think  as  God  thinks,  to  love 
what  He  loves,  to  hate  what  He  hates,  to  assess  all  things 
as  by  His  judgment — this  is  the  last  and  highest  effort 
of  human  wisdom.  And  tried  by  that  great  test,  who 
stands  higher ;  Hume  or  Wesley,  Gibbon  or  Law,  Rousseau 
or  Fletcher  ?  Leslie  Stephen,  and  men  of  his  school,  vote 
with  the  philosophers ;  but  the  human  conscience  stands 
arrayed  on  the  side  of  the  saints !  And  the  best  human 
intelligence,  as  soon  as  it  has  come  to  terms  with  con- 
science, will  be  on  their  side  too  ! 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  how  Wesley  would  have 
borne  himself  had  he  lived  in  the  hurry  and  press  of  the 
twentieth  century.  Would  his  theory  of  life  and  religion 
have  stood  the  challenge  of  modern  problems?  How 
would  he  have  been  affected  by  the  criticism  which 
resolves  the  Bible  into  a  jumble  of  undated  and  authorless 
myths  ?  With  what  eyes  would  Wesley  have  looked,  that 
is  to  say,  on  a  Rainbow  Bible  ?  How  would  he  have  dealt 
with  all  the  new,  fermenting  unbeliefs,  bred  of  science,  or 
of  half-science  ?  Would  his  faith  have  been  shaken  by  the 
biology  which  links  man  to  the  ape ;  the  astronomy  that 
dwarfs  the  solar  system  itself  to  a  mere  point  in  the 
measureless  depths  of  the  universe,  and  sees  the  earth  as 
an  insignificant  speck  in  those  awful  spaces  ?  How  would 
he  have  dealt  with  the  secular  temper  of  the  present  age ; 
the  temper  which  cares  very  much  for  this  world  and 
leaves  the  next  out  of  its  arithmetic  ? 

It  is  idle  to  say  that  these  things  do  not  count.  Wesley 
in  the  twentieth  century  would  have  been  a  different  man 
from  Wesley  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Leslie  Stephen  is 
moved  to  a  sort  of  angry  wonder  at  Wesley's  indifference 
to  what  he  regards  as  the  victorious  attack  of  Hume  and 
Gibbon  on  the  Christian  faith.  Although  these  men  were 
his  contemporaries,  yet  Wesley,  he  complains,  is  "  as  in- 
different to  the  doubts  expressed  by  Hume  as  if  the  two 
men  had  lived  in  different  hemispheres  or  centuries." 
The  explanation,  of  course,  lies  in  the  fact  that  Wesley 


WESLEY'S  CRITICS  523 

lived  in  a  realm  where  these  doubts  did  not  run !  He, 
no  doubt,  would  have  agreed  with  De  Quincey's  trium- 
phant answer  to  Hume ;  but  he  had  a  better  answer  than 
even  that.  The  logic  designed  to  prove  miracles  could 
not  happen — or,  at  least,  could  not  be  proved,  if  they  did 
happen — was  idle  breath  to  a  man  who  saw  miracles 
of  the  highest  order — spiritual  miracles,  that  is — happen- 
ing daily. 

And  it  may  be  confidently  said  Wesley  would  have 
been  unshaken  by  even  the  strenuous  and  many- voiced 
unbelief  of  to-day.  The  larger  knowledge  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  might  have  altered  the  accent  of  his  teach- 
ing, but  not  its  substance.  It  might  have  varied  the 
form  of  its  work;  it  would  not  have  changed  its  aim, 
nor  have  lessened  its  energy.  He  would  have  fallen 
back  on  the  triumphant  certainties  of  his  own  experience. 
He  would  have  held  firm  to  his  belief  in  the  validity  of 
spiritual  phenomena,  the  veracity  of  the  spiritual  con- 
sciousness. The  triumphant  logic  of  the  verified  results 
of  Christianity  would  have  been  for  Wesley  in  the  twen- 
tieth century — as  it  was  to  him  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury— the  rock  on  which  he  stood.  God,  he  would  have 
said,  is  not  a  problem  to  be  solved;  He  is  a  person  to 
be  known ;  and  he  would  have  borrowed  Tennyson's  fine 
line — 

"  Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  nearer  than  hands  and  feet." 

He  would  have  claimed  that  Spirit  answers  to  spirit  in 
us ;  the  living  Spirit  of  God  to  the  believing  human 
spirit. 

And  Wesley,  even  amid  the  tumult  and  dust  of  modern 
life,  would  have  kept  in  clear  vision  the  eternal  per- 
spective of  life  and  duty,  which  was  his  characteristic. 
Duty  is  more  urgent  than  speculation.  We  shall  not 
be  judged  by  what  we  know,  but  by  what  we  do.  Religion 
has  a  thousand  problems  challenging  solution ;  they  will 
challenge  solution  still,  perhaps  ten  thousand  years  hence, 
and  in  other  worlds.  But  duty  is  the  one  luminous  point 
in  human  Me.  There  are  things  which  are  near,  urgent, 
sacred ;  things  as  to  which  no  debate  is  possible — the 
plain  law  of  obedience ;  of  surrender  to  God ;  of  faith  in 


524  WESLEY    AND   HIS    CENTURY 

Christ;  of  service  to  our  fellow-men.  Christianity,  he 
would  have  said,  is  a  realised  and  supernatural  deliver- 
ance, to  be  received  by  faith;  and  as  to  the  reality  of 
which  our  own  deepest  consciousness  can  judge.  The 
Bible  is  not  an  old  almanac,  about  which  the  chief  thing 
is  the  correctness  of  its  dates.  The  critics,  to  his  clear 
and  earnest  eye,  would  have  seemed  like  men  so  occu- 
pied in  discussing  the  shape  of  the  vessel  which  carries 
the  living  water  of  truth,  and  the  clay  of  which  it  is 
composed,  that  they  forget  the  precious  draught  itself 
for  lack  of  which  the  world  is  perishing. 

The  Bible,  he  would  have  said,  on  any  theory,  is  a 
divine  revelation ;  a  law  of  conduct,  a  chart  by  which  we 
are  to  sail.  It  is  not  a  puzzle  to  be  solved,  but  a  system  of 
precepts  to  be  obeyed.  And  Wesley  would  have  called  on 
listening  crowds  to-day  in  accents  as  urgent  and  convinced 
as  he  did  over  a  hundred  years  ago,  to  accept  the  message 
of  the  divine  book,  and  to  shape  life  by  its  laws.  The 
principles,  in  a  word,  on  which  Wesley  believed  and  lived 
and  worked  in  the  eighteenth  century  would,  for  him, 
have  been  just  as  effective  if  they  had  been  suddenly  trans- 
ferred to  the  twentieth  century. 


EPILOGUE 

THE   CONTINUITY    OF    SPIRITUAL   IMPULSE 

IT  is  possible  to-day,  as  it  never  was  before,  to  set 
Methodism  in  the  perspective  of  history ;  to  analyse  and 
assess  it;  to  discover  the  essential  and  imperishable 
characteristics  in  which  lie  the  secret  of  its  growth.  And 
in  the  actual  illumination  of  events  an  answer  can  be 
found  to  the  question,  what  Divine  purpose  there  was, 
and  is,  in  the  Church  which  Wesley  founded  ? 

There  is  a  temptation  to  define  Methodism  by  negatives. 
It  was  not,  like  the  great  movement  which  bears  the 
name  of  Luther,  a  theological  reformation,  a  re-discovery 
of  doctrine.  It  was  not,  like  the  English  Reformation  in 
the  time  of  Henry  VIII.,  a  political  movement.  It  was 
not  like  the  Scottish  Reformation,  a  quarrel  about 
ecclesiastical  theories.  But  there  is  no  adequate  defini- 
tion in  a  series  of  negatives,  drawn  out  to  no  matter  what 
length. 

It  is  common,  again,  to  fix  upon  some  one  special 
characteristic  of  Methodism,  and  offer  the  part  as  an 
explanation  of  the  whole.  That  Methodism  stands  for 
the  evangelical,  as  against  the  sacerdotal,  version  of 
Christianity  has  become  a  platitude.  That  it  stands  for 
the  concrete,  as  against  the  metaphysical  reading  of 
theology,  is  a  sister  platitude.  A  creed  drawn  out  in 
metaphysical  propositions  is  one  thing;  a  creed  trans- 
lated into  terms  of  conduct,  verified  in  the  conscious- 
ness, a  force  shaping  speech  and  temper  and  life,  is  quite 
another  thing.  "Experience"  fills  a  large  space  in 
the  terminology  and  literature  of  Methodism;  and  "ex- 
perience" in  the  Methodist  sense  means  doctrine  trans- 
lated into  human  and  living  terms. 

Methodism,  it  is  usual  to  say,  stands  for  spiritual  fact 
as  against  external  form  in  ecclesiastical  affairs ;  and  this 
is  perfectly  true.  Varieties  of  Church  order — Episcopal 

525 


526  WESLEY   AND   HIS   CENTURY 

or  Presbyterian — belong  to  the  category  of  secondary 
values.  Methodism,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  flourishes  equally 
well  with  bishops  or  without  them.  The  notion  that 
the  infinite  and  all-tender  grace  of  Christ  can  trickle 
through  an  ecclesiastical  pipe  of  only  one  pattern  is, 
to  Methodism,  abhorrent.  If  any  one  invited  the  world 
to  believe  that  the  sun  shines  on  flowers  of  only  one  tint, 
the  answer  would  be  not  merely  that  such  a  theory  is  in 
quarrel  with  the  whole  science  of  botany.  Every  cottage 
garden  is  its  refutation !  Every  patch  of  flower-sprinkled 
grass  disproves  it.  And  the  theory  that  God's  grace  is 
confined  to  only  one  variety  of  ecclesiastical  form  is  not 
only  in  quarrel  with  the  essential  genius  of  Christianity ; 
it  is  contradicted  by  the  visible  facts  of  the  world. 

Methodism,  again,  stands  for  the  imperial  as  against  the 
parochial  temper  in  Church  work.  "The  world  is  my 
parish"  was  Wesley's  immortal  phrase;  inverting  the 
common  rule  in  which  the  "  parish "  becomes  the  world. 
The  tradition  Whitefield  and  Wesley  created  when  they 
stepped  from  the  pulpit  to  the  hillside  and  the  street,  and 
began  open-air  preaching,  is  its  inheritance.  It  stands, 
that  is,  for  the  aggressive  as  against  the  purely  apologetic 
and  defensive  spirit  in  Christian  service.  And  it  is  built 
on  the  present,  as  against  the  merely  historic,  theory  of 
the  office  and  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  believes,  as  we 
have  already  said,  that  Pentecost  was  not  one  particular 
cluster  of  hours,  in  an  Eastern  city,  two  thousand  years 
distant.  Pentecost  lies  about  us !  We  are  living  in  it ; 
its  airs  blow  upon  us.  The  fiery  tongues  are  gone,  but  the 
spiritual  energies  of  which  they  were  the  symbol  are  the 
possession  of  the  Church  of  to-day. 

The  unconfessed — perhaps  the  unconscious— but  cer- 
tainly the  practical  belief  of  a  considerable  portion  of  Chris- 
tendom, is  that  the  Holy  Spirit  fell  upon  the  Church  once, 
and  shaped  its  history ;  but  at  a  given  date  the  Divine 
Spirit  emigrated ;  and  the  Church  of  to-day  is  left  without 
direct  Divine  guidance.  It  can  only  ascertain  what  is  the 
will  of  that  great  Agent  in  human  redemption  by  painfully 
searching  amid  the  dusty  records  of  far-off  centuries ! 

Methodism,  it  may  be  added,  is  pledged  to  the  family 
theory  of  Church  relationship.  Its  membership  is  built 
on  community  of  speech  and  experience ;  on  a  living  and 


THE   CONTINUITY   OF    SPIRITUAL   IMPULSE       527 

declared  partnership  in  all  the  great  forces  of  the  spiritual 
life. 

But  all  such  definitions  are  partial.  They  express 
particular  aspects  of  Methodism ;  they  do  not  reach  its 
central  and  unifying  characteristic.  Methodism,  first  and 
last,  is  the  re-affirmation  of  the  spiritual  element  in 
Christianity.  It  is  the  re-emergence  in  history,  and  in 
human  consciousness,  of  the  great  spiritual  forces  which 
are  the  vital  and  essential  characteristics  of  Christianity. 
The  name,  the  machinery,  the  characteristic  beliefs,  the 
household  bonds,  the  practical  ideals  of  Methodism  may 
exist ;  but  they  are  not  in  themselves  Methodism.  They 
are  simply  the  channels  through  which,  if  they  are  to 
have  any  value,  must  run  that  vivifying  and  supernatural 
impulse,  the  wave  of  spiritual  energy,  which  was  the 
essential  characteristic  of  Wesley's  work. 

And  the  most  impressive  feature  of  that  work — that 
which  differentiates  it  from  so  many  other  historic  re- 
vivals, and  is  in  a  special  sense  the  very  signature  of 
God  upon  it — is  the  unbroken  continuity  of  spiritual 
impulse  which  runs  through  its  history.  Luther  once 
said  that  no  revival  could  last  more  than  thirty  years. 
Isaac  Taylor  extends  the  term  to  fifty  years.  And  it  has 
to  be  frankly  admitted  that  time  is  a  remorseless  critic  of 
even  religious  movements.  Its  arresting  force  is  visible 
in  the  spiritual  realm.  A  great  revival  is  usually  linked 
to  a  single  commanding  figure,  as,  for  example,  with  that 
of  Jonathan  Edwards,  or  of  Thomas  Finney  in  America, 
of  the  Erskines  or  McCheyne  in  Scotland,  of  Whitefield 
in  England,  of  Dwight  L.  Aloody  in  later  times,  &c.  And 
the  revival  ends  with  the  individual  life ;  sometimes, 
indeed,  before  it.  It  is  a  wave  that  spends  itself  within 
some  little  definite  area  of  time.  Rarely  does  it  outrun 
the  span  of  a  generation.  A  great  revivalist,  like  a  great 
statesman,  easily  becomes  a  spent  force. 

But  the  feature  which  separates  Wesley's  work  from 
other  historic  revivals  is  the  sustained  energy  of  spiritual 
force  which  marks  it.  This  continuity  of  spiritual  impulse 
ran  through  the  whole  term  of  Wesley's  life.  His  message 
kept  to  the  very  last  its  power  to  attract  and  sway  crowds. 
The  stream  of  conversions  under  his  preaching  never 
ceased  to  flow.  And  the  movement  which  began  with 


528  WESLEY    AND   HIS   CENTURY 

Wesley  did  not  die  with  him.  It  survived  his  death. 
What  is  much  mo.re  wonderful,  it  survived  all  the  ecclesi- 
astical quarrels  which  broke  out  amongst  his  followers 
after  his  death.  A  hundred  temporary  blunders  in  policy 
have  not  destroyed  it.  It  has  persisted  in  spite  of  half-a- 
dozen  disruptions.  It  has  run  through  a  whole  century 
since  without  rest  or  failure.  It  burns  on  with  un- 
quenched  flame  under  all  skies. 

Methodism,  it  may  be  claimed,  when  set  in  the  light  of 
history,  satisfies  Newman's  famous  seven  tests  of  the 
reality  of  a  Church — preservation  of  type,  continuity  of 
principle,  power  of  assimilation,  logical  sequence,  antici- 
pation of  the  future,  conservative  action  on  the  past,  and 
— most  triumphant  of  all — undying  vitality. 

No  one  can  realise  the  wonder  of  this  sustained  energy 
of  life  who  does  not  remember  how  broken,  how  acrid 
with  ecclesiastical  quarrels,  has  been  —  through  wide 
spaces,  at  least — the  history  of  Methodism  since  its  founder 
died.  On  all  the  analogies  of  history  Methodism,  when 
Wesley  died,  might  have  been  expected  to  break  up  into 
quarrelling  fragments,  and  to  have  expired  in  a  tangle  of 
schisms.  The  quarrels  came  fast  and  thick.  There  was 
one  division  within  seven  years  of  Wesley's  death ;  three  in 
the  first  twenty-five  years  after  his  death ;  and  a  fourth 
a  little  later,  the  most  tragical  of  all.  The  quarrels  of 
1847-50  cost  the  parent  Church,  in  five  sad  years,  more 
members  than  Wesley  gained  in  fifty  years.  And  the 
divisions  of  Methodism,  speaking  generally,  have  had  less 
justification  in  reason  than  any  other  to  be  found  in  the 
history  of  Christ's  Church.  Not  one  of  them  represents 
a  protest  against  doctrinal  error,  or  a  struggle  for  spiritual 
freedom. 

The  best  way  of  realising  how  unnecessary  were  the 
divisions  of  Methodism,  how  microscopic  the  questions 
which  gave  birth  to  them,  is  to  consider  the  aspect  they 
wear  to  outsiders.  Any  respectable  encyclopaedia  which 
tries  to  express  in  plain  English  what  is  the  exact  differ- 
ence betwixt  a  Wesleyan  Methodist,  a  Primitive  Methodist, 
a  Bible  Christian,  or  a  United  Free  Methodist,  &c.,  finds 
itself  simply  bankrupt.  One  of  the  best  English  encyclo- 
paedias, for  example,  after  an  anxious  study  of  the  history 
and  characteristics  of  the  Bible  Christian  Church,  says 


THE    CONTINUITY    OF    SPIRITUAL    IMPULSE       529 

that  "  the  principal  difference "  betwixt  it  and  its  sister 
forms  of  Methodism  "  seems  to  be  that  the  Bible  Christians 
take  a  sitting  posture  at  the  Lord's  Supper."  To  resolve 
the  difference  betwixt  one  variety  of  Methodism  and 
another  into  the  interval  betwixt  a  chair  and  a  hassock  is 
surely  very  cruel ! 

A  not  unfriendly  historian,  J.  R.  Green,  is  puzzled  by 
this  evil  fertility  in  divisions  which  marks  one  stage  of 
Methodist  history,  and  offers  as  an  explanation  the  state- 
ment that  "  of  all  Protestant  Churches,  Methodism  is  the 
most  rigid  in  its  organisation,  the  most  despotic  hi  its 
government."  But  that  statement,  if  it  ever  was  true,  is 
true  no  longer ! 

Some  divisions  were,  no  doubt,  inevitable  in  Methodist 
history ;  for  when  Wesley  died,  no  true  equipoise  betwixt 
the  forces  and  tendencies  within  its  bounds  had  been 
reached.  An  institution  which  had  felt  from  its  very 
birth,  and  for  so  many  years,  the  pressure  of  a  single 
masterful  hand  could  hardly  develop  in  a  moment  the 
virtues  both  of  flexibility  and  of  self-poised  stability. 
Methodism,  too,  was  affected  in  its  earlier  years  by  the 
temper  of  secular  politics  outside  it.  The  French  Revo- 
lution, when  Wesley  lay  dying,  was  beginning  to  shake,  as 
with  the  thrust  of  an  earthquake,  and  almost  into  ruin,  all 
forms  of  human  society,  secular  or  religious.  The  influ- 
ence of  that  great  movement  predisposed  men  for  nearly 
a  generation,  both  to  vehemently  demand  changes,  and  to 
vehemently  refuse  them. 

But  whatever  may  be  the  explanation  of  the  great  and 
quick-following  disruptions  which  rent  Wesley's  Church 
asunder,  and  made  it  for  a  time  resemble  an  exploded 
planet  flying  in  fragments  through  the  ecclesiastical 
heavens,  it  might  have  been  predicted  with  the  utmost 
confidence  that  these  divisions  would  arrest  all  spiritual 
growth.  The  remarkable  circumstance  is  that  this  was 
not  the  case !  The  spiritual  impulse  of  Methodism  has 
survived  all  its  schisms.  It  has  characterised  in  some 
degree  or  other  each  separate  fragment.  Sea  transit  has 
not  killed  it ;  new  social  and  geographical  environments 
have  not  arrested  it.  Methodism  has  crossed  all  the 
seas  of  the  planet,  and  taken  root  on  every  soil.  It  has 
varied  its  name,  its  forms,  its  methods ;  but  under  all 

2  L 


530  WESLEY   AND    HIS    CENTURY 

its  forms,  it  has  kept  steadfastly  loyal  to  its  original 
ideal.  And  everywhere  it  is  marked  by  that  same  strange 
continuity  of  spiritual  impulse. 

We  have  only  to  set  side  by  side  the  statistics  of 
Methodism  in  1791,  when  Wesley  died,  with  those  of  1891 
a  century  later,  to  realise  this.  But  the  present  writer 
may  be  forgiven  for  offering  another  and  a  nearer  proof  of 
the  inextinguishable  vitality  of  Methodism.  He  belongs 
to  the  Australasian  branch  of  Wesley's  Church,  a  branch 
which  had  not  even  begun  to  exist  when  Wesley  died.  It 
is  parted  from  Wesley  himself  by  more  than  a  century  of 
time,  and  from  the  parent  Church  by  twelve  thousand 
miles  of  sea  space.  The  total  population  of  Australasia  is 
less  than  the  population  of  London.  It  is  only  a  handful 
of  people  sprinked  over  a  continent. 

And  yet  in  this  one  branch  of  contemporary  Methodism, 
separated  both  in  time  and  space  so  widely  from  its 
founder,  and  from  the  parent  Church,  there  is,  in  some 
respects,  a  more  spacious  Methodism  than  the  whole  world 
knew  when  Wesley  died.  The  members  in  Australasian 
class-meetings  to-day  exceed  by  30  per  cent,  the  total 
membership  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  in  1 79 1 .  There 
were  only  287  Methodist  preachers  in  Great  Britain  when 
Wesley  died,  only  511  in  the  whole  world.  There  are  over 
700  Methodist  ministers  in  Australasia  alone  to-day  ! 

Similar  figures  might  be  quoted  from  Canada  and  the 
United  States,  and  they  certainly  prove  the  unexhausted 
life  of  Methodism.  The  pulses  of  that  life  beat  in  new 
lands,  in  a  new  century,  and  amongst  new  nations.  In 
spite  of  a  thousand  human  imperfections  and  mistakes 
and  quarrels,  Methodist  history  since  Wesley  died  is 
but  the  translation  into  historic  and  visible  fact  of  his 
dying  and  triumphant  whisper,  "  The  best  of  all  is,  God 
is  with  us  " 


INDEX 


ACOURT,  Mr.,  324 

Act  of  Toleration  (1689),  339,  379, 

386,  404,  410,  417 
Addison,  9 
Albany, 262 
A Idersgate  Street  (room),  2, 123-128, 

132,  135,  151,  219,  281 
Alexander  the  Great,  488 
Anacreon,  quoted,  500 
Annesley,  Dr.,  15,  56 

Mr.,  26 

Susannah,    16   (see  also  under 

Wesley,  Mrs.) 

Antoninus,  Emperor  Marcus,  488 
Armenian  Magazine,  38,  66,  476 
Arnold,  Matthew,  quoted,  2,  45 
Asbury,  Francis,  264-268,  272,  273, 

395,415,416 
Athlone,  254 
Aurelius,  Marcus,  275 


BALHAM,  510 

Ball,  Roger,  320 

Ballingarrene,  village,  261 

Bannockburn,  battle  of,  293 

Barnard  Castle,  228 

Barry,  Dr.,  288,  289 

Bawtry,  193 

Baxter's  "  History  of  the  Councils," 

488-489 
Beard,  John,  254 

—  Thomas,  196 
Beecher,  Mr.,  345 
Behn,  Mrs.  Aphra,  <; 
Bell,  George,  362,  363,  368 
Bengel,  475 

Bennet,  John,  347,  459-466 
Mrs.,   463,  464  (see  also  under 

Murray,  Grace) 
Benson,  Rev.  — ,  379,  381 
Benson's  "  Wesley,"  quoted,  75 
Bentley,  343 


531 


Berkeley,  Bishop,  147,  448 

Bermondsey,  159 

Berridge,  Mr.,  363,  384,  385,  471 

Bexley,  164,  347 

"  Biblemoths,"  74 

Birmingham,  196,  319,  320 

Birrell,    Augustine,   quoted,    2,    21, 

478,  479 

Birstal,  195,  207,  208,  211 
Bismarck,  Prince,  283 
Blair,  Rev.  — ,  145 
Blandford,  13 
Boardman,  Richard,  264 
Boehm,  Mr.,  369 
Bohler,   Peter,   105,    106,    116-118, 

121,  122,  125,   131-134,  150,  169, 

175,  221,  286,  316,  373 
Bolingbroke,  Lord,  144,  378,  379 
Bond,  Mark,  228-235,  239 
Boroughbridge,  193 
Bosanquet,    Miss   (afterwards   Mrs. 

Fletcher),  394 
Bos  well's  "  Johnson,"  481 
Bowers,  205 

Bradford ,  Joseph,  510-513 
Bray,  Mr.,  119,  120 
Bristol,  159,  160,  163,  191,  201,  203, 

207,  221,  262,  304,  305,  313,  330, 

349.  351,  382,  396,  402,  411,  412, 

415,458,  507,  510,  511 
Broughton,  Rev.  — ,  92 
Brownfield,  Mr.,  263 
Brussels,  226 

Buckingham,  Duke  of,  43 
Buckle's  "  History  of  Civilisation," 

2,  6,  379 

Buckley,  Dr.,  344,  345 
Bunyan,  John,  6,  7,  208,  209,  235, 

258 

Burke,  Edmund,  9,  482 
Burns,  Robert,  9 
Burton,  Dr.,  92 
Butler,  Bishop,  4,  6,  146,  147 


532 


INDEX 


Butler's  "  Wesley  and  Whitefield," 

241,  243,  247 

Butler,  ballad  singer,  254,  255 
Byron,  Lord,  9,  93 


,  Julius,  8 
Calvin,  332 
Cambuslang,  243 
Canning,  Lord,  9 
Canterbury,  233 

Archbishop  of,  164 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  quoted,  3 
Causton,  Mr.,  106,  109,  no 
Cavour,  283 

Cennick,  John,  328,  329 
Charles  I. ,  484 

II.,  484,  485 

Charlestown,  in,  282 
Charterhouse  School,  38, 43,44,  59, 61 
Chelsea,  509 

Chesterfield,  Earl  of,  378 
Christian  Endeavour  Societies,  289 
"  Christian  Library,"  369,  370,  475 
Church,  Prebend  Thomas,  340,  341, 

410 
City  Road  Chapel,    178,   283,  406, 

411,  502,  509,  512 
Clarke,  Adam,  495,  501 

Bishop,  144 

Clements,  W.,  226 

Clerkenwell,  153 

Clive,  Lord,  9,  479,  515 

Clulow,  Mr.,  417 

Cobbett,  William,  258 

Coke,  Dr.,  268,   272,  273,  394-398, 

404,  413-418,  454 
Colchester,  507 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  6,  9,  40,  64,  117, 

119,  123-126,  156,  158,  220,  318, 

331,427,  454,  489 
Colley,   Richard  (see   under  Morn- 

ington,  Baron) 
Contemporary  Revieiv,  40 
Conventicle  Act,  417 
Cook,  Captain,  480 
Cork,  246,  254,  418 
Courtmatrix,  village,  261 
Cowper,  William,  109,  144,  216 
Crabbe,  500,  501 
Cranmer,  Archbishop,  421 
Creighton,  Rev.  — ,  272 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  445 
Crowther,  John,  247 
Cumberland,  Duke  of,  225,  233 
Cupar,  193 


DALE,  Dr.,  133 

Dante,  8 

Darlaston,  196 

Darwin,  Charles,  8 

Davies,  Sir  John,  252 

Dawson,  George,  7 

De  Quincey,  63,  64,  343,  523 

Deal,  96,  116 

"Deed  of  Declaration,"  397-398, 437 

Defoe,  Daniel,  13 

Delamotte,   Rev.   Charles,    97,  98, 

103,  107, 113 
Dettingen,  battle  of,  266 
Dionysius,  315 
Doddridge,  147 
Downs,  John,  347 
Dublin,  252-255,  320 
Dumfries,  247 
Dundee,  Lord,  484 
Dunfermline,  240 
Durham,  196 


EDINBUEOH,  242,  243,  245 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  187,  240,  377, 

378,  527 

John,  390 

Embury,  Philip,  261-263 

Epictetus,  275 

Epworth,   4,    15,  17,  21-26,  30-37, 

40-44,  47,  57,  58,  66,67,  71,  88, 

89,  92,  95,  loo,  106,  193,  217,  401, 

410,  460,  506 
Erasmus,  Bishop,  365 
I  Erskine,  Ralph,  187,  240,  241,  244, 

527 
1  Evans,  Caleb,  490,  491 

John,  226,  237 

|  Everton,  384,  471 

Exeter  (U.  S.),  376 


I  FALMOUTH,  197 
Ferrers,  Earl,  378 
Fetter  Lane  (room),  221,  312,  313, 

315 

Finney,  Thomas,  527 
Fitz  Gerald,  478 
Fleet  Prison,  101 
Fletcher,  Rev.  — ,  264-266,  379-385, 

391-393.     396,     454,     52°.     522; 
"  Checks  to  Antinomianism,"  320, 

384,  386 
Florence,  243 
Fontenoy.  battle  of    226,  232,  233, 

237 


INDEX 


533 


Fothergill,  Dr.,  493 

"  Foundry,  The,"  347,  348,  468,  469 

Fox,  Mr.,  152 

Foy,  Captain,  221 

Frank,  Professor,  369 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  260,  413 

Frederica,  io8n.,  no,  167 

Frederick  the  Great,  515 

Froude,  J.  A.,  287 

Fry,  Mrs. ,  335 


GALLATIN,  Captain,  244 
Gambold,  Kev.  — ,  92 
Gason,  William,  165 
Gateshead  Fell,  194 
George  II.,  140,  141,  486 

III.,  141,  293 

IV.,  293 

Georgia,  67,  71,  80,  84,  90-116,  127, 
163,  1 66,  167,  174,  190,  330,  456, 
458,  467 

Ghent,  231,  237 

Gibbon,  9,  46,  69,  520-522 

Gibson,  Bishop,  156,  157,  337-341 

Gillies,  Dr.,  245 

Gladstone,   W.  E.,    200,  201,  283, 

47°,  5°4 

Glasgow,  245-247 
Gloucester,  166,  378,  508 

Bishop  of,  340 

Godly  Club,  74  (see  also  under  Holy 

Club) 

Goldsmith,  9 
Gordon  Riots,  153,  480 
Goston's  Green,  196 
Goter,  Mr.,  165 
Granville,  Mary,  86  (see  also  under 

Pendarvis,  Mrs.,  "Aspasia") 
Gravesend,  200,  201 
Green,  J.  R.,  quoted,  5,  248,  529 
Greenock,  246 
Grimshaw,  William,  396 
Grotius,  386 
Guyon,  Madame,  58 
Gwennap  Pit,  201,  299,  336 
G wynne,  Mr.,  457 

—  Mrs.,  457 

—  Miss,  457  (see  also  under  Wesley, 
Mrs.  Charles) 


HABEAS  Corpus  Act,  348 

Haime,  John,  208,226-229,  232-239 

Hall,  Wesley,  30,  31,  97,  155,  402 


!  Hall,  Mrs.  Wesley,  448  (see  also  under 

Wesley,  Martha) 

i  Hampson,  John,  361,  398,  447,  451- 
454,471,500 

Hampton  Common,  173 

Hanby,  Thomas,  417 

Harvey,  James,  74 

Hastings,  Warren,  515 

Haweis,  Mr.,  363 

Hayden,  John,  184 

Heck,  Barbara,  261,  263 

Heights  of  Abraham,  262 

Herbert,  Sidney,  36 

Hervey,  244 

Lord,  145 

"  Hetty  Wesley,"  24 

Hill,  Richard,  384 

—  Rowland,  384,  385 
Hodges,  Rev.  — ,  347 
Hogarth,  5 

Holy  Club,  81,  82,  92,  95,  97,  129, 
155,  170,  287,  373  (see  also  under 
Godly  Club) 

Hopkey,  Miss  Susan,  106-108,  458, 
463,  467  (see  also  under  William- 
son, Mrs.) 

Home,  Bishop,  343 

Howard,  294,  521 

Howe,  Lord,  4 

Hume,  519-523 

Huntingdon,  Earl  of,  378 

-Lady,  211,  335,  363,  378-383, 
386,  387 

Huss,  John,  125 

Hutchins,  155 

Hutchinson,  Lord,  248 

Hutton,  James,  373 

—  Mrs.,  149 
Huxley,  Prof.,  154 


INGHAM,  Rev.  Benjamin,  92,  97, 

105,  113,  155 
Ireland,  Mr.,  393 
Irving,  Edward,  172 
Islington,  155 


JACKSON,  Thomas,  177,  502 

James  I.,  486 

Jane,  John, 217 

Johnson,  Dr.,  9,  30,  68,  78,  97,  448, 
474,  481,  482,  490,  491;  "Taxa- 
tion no  Tyranny,"  269,  453,  490 

Jones,  John,  365 


534 


KANT,  288 

Keats,  quoted,  480 

Keble,  287,  503 

Kempis,  Thomas  a,  63-65,  120,  121, 

284,  369 

Kennington  Common,  165,  195,  239 
Kinchin,  Charles,  74,  155 
King,  Lord,  273,  402,  413 
Kingswood,  56,    146,  161,   165-168, 

185,  186,  192,  283,  303,  328,  329, 

336,  357,  376,  470 
Kingswood  School,   399,   448,   476, 

494-496 
Kirkham,  Betty  ("  Varanese"),  48, 

87,  458 

Robert,  48,  74 

Knox,  Alexander,  78,  418,  447 
John, 301 


LADY  Huntingdon's  Connexion,  387 
Lang,  Andrew,  40,  41 
Lansdowne,  Lord,  86 
Laud,  Archbishop,  64,  287 
Lavington,   Bishop,   342,  474,  482, 

483 
Law,   William,   63,   68-70,    80,   93, 

120-122,  147,  284,  286,  515,  516, 

519-522 

Leatherhead,  280,  509 
Lecky,  W.   E.  H.,  2,  21,  126,    143, 

249,  250,  285,  290,  291,  505 
Leeds,  491 

"  Legal  Hundred,"  390,  397-399 
Lely,  1 6 
Lexington,  268 
Limerick,  248,  256 
Lincoln,  26 
Lincoln  Castle,  18,  49 
Littlemore,  284 
Liverpool,  Lord,  325 
Locke,  John,  7 
Lonsdale,  Lord,  292 
Louisburg,  siege  of,  262 
Lowth,  Bishop,  271 
Loyola,    Ignatius,    302,    335,    336, 

375  >  439  '>  "  Life  of,"  488 
Luther,   Martin,    5,    125,   335,   421, 

525,  527 


MACAULAY,  Lord,  i,  2,  335,  378 
Macchiavelli's  "  Prince,"  487 
Madan,  Mr.,  363 
Madeley,  384,  520 
Maestricht,  233 


Mandeville's  "Fable  of  the  Bees," 

487 

Manners,  Nicholas,  263 
Mansfield,  Lord,  387,  404,  413,  418 
Marlborough,  Duke  of,  9,  515 

Duchess  of,  139 

Marshalsea  Prison,  101 

Marvel,  Andrew,  448 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  485,  486 

Mather,  Alexander,  211,   212,   217, 

417,418 
Maurice,  290 
Maxfield,   Thomas,    185,    206,    207, 

303,  304,  347,  362,  365,  394 
Maxwell,  Lady,  245,  494 
McChine,  527 
McCulloch,  Rev.  — ,  243 
Melbourne,  Lord,  338 
Merriton,  John,  347 
Middleton,  Rev.  — ,  145 
Milman,  Dean,  63 
Milton,  John,  7,  63,  276,  369 
"  Model  Deed,"  397 
Molther,  Philip  Henry,  312-319 
Montagu,  Lady  Mary  Wortley,  146 
Montesquieu,  4 
Moody,  Dwight  L.,  527 
Moore's  "Wesley,"  107 
Moore,  Henry,  417,  418 
Moorfields,  165,  168,   181,  195,  299 

315,  344,  345,  463,  470 
More,  Hannah,  105 
Morgan,  William,  74,  81,  82,  92,  373 
Morley,  John,  200 
Mornington,  Baron,  44 
Murray,    Grace,    458-467    (see    also 

under  Bennet,  Mrs.) 
Musselburgh,  244 
Myles,  217 


NAPOLEON,  Emperor,  8,  451,  452 
Nelson,  Lord,  9 

—  John,  181,   196,  207-211,  220, 

258,  259,  299,  369,  463 
New  York,  261,  263 
Newbury  Port,  376 
Newcastle-on-Tyne,   191,    194,    196, 

305,  458,  462,  466.  470 
Newgate  Prison,  151,  292,  521 
Newman,  Cardinal,  6,  9,  284-289, 

336,  337,  425,  528 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  9,  286,  515 
Nitschman,  Moravian  elder,  107 
Norden's   "Travels  in   Egypt   and 
Abyssinia,"  498 


INDEX 


535 


Norfolk,  Duke  of,  292 
North,  Lord,  3,  269,  490,  492 
Northampton,  490 
Norwich,  217,  343 

OGLETHORPE,  General,  92,  97,  101- 

105,  373 

"  Old  Jeffrey,"  ghost,  37-41,  286 

Olivers,  Thomas,  212,  384 

Orange,  Prince  of,  485 

Overton,  Canon,  83,  84,  127,  514 

Oxford,  14,  19,  30,  44-48,  59,  66, 
71-74,  84,  89-97,  101,  103,  107, 
117,  127,  131,  155,  170,  206,  216- 
219,  251,  287,  289,  336,  343,  352, 
364.  373,  479,  48o 

Movement,  286 


PALEY,  290 

Palmer,  290 

"  Pantheon,"  386 

Paris,  291,  521 

Pascal,  475;  "Provincial  Letters," 

384 

Pawson,  Rev.  John,  263,  361,  417 

Pearson,  Bishop,  369 

Pendarvis,   Mrs.    ("Aspasia"),    87, 
458  (sec  also  under  Granville,  Mary) 

Pennington,  William,  370 

Perronet,   Rev.   Charles,   253,    361, 
457,  466 

Ned,  467 

Peter  I.,  283 

Philadelphia,  260 

Piers,  Rev.  — ,  164,  347 

Pilmoor,  Joseph,  264 

Pitt,  William,  4,  9,  283,  480,  515 
•  (the  younger),  9,  480,  515 

Pope,  Alexander,  9,  15,  448 
William  Burt,  432,  433 

Porteus,  Bishop,  140 

Portsmouth  (U.S.),  376 

Potter,  Archbishop,  165 

Priestley,  40 

"Proposal  for  a  National  Reforma- 
tion of  Manners,"  139 

Pusey,  286 

QUILLER-COUCH,  A.  T.,  24 
Quintin,  347 


RAIKES,  Robert,  521 

Rankin,  Thomas,  266-268,  417,  418 


Reeves,  Jonathan,  351,  352 
Religious  Tract  Society,  473 
Richard  III.,  485 
Richards,  Thomas,  206,  347 
Richter,  Jean  Paul,  64 
Ritchie,  Bessie,  509-511 
Robinson,  Henry  Crabbe,  507 
Roduey,  Lord,  4 
Rogers,  Mr.,  512 

—  Mrs.  Hester  Ann,  512 

—  Samuel,  153 

;  Romaine.  Mr.,  363 
,  Rome,  287,  335 
j  Romney,  George,  292 
|  Rosebery,  Lord,  445 

Rousseau,  55,  486,  520-522 

Rupert,  Prince,  240 

Ryan,  Sarah,  469 


"  SACRAMENTARIANS,"  74 

St.  Antholin's  Church,  177 

St.  Clement's,  Strand,  153 

St.  Giles's,  153 

St.  Ives,  305 

St.  Margaret's,  Westminster,  159 

St.  Patrick,  485 

Salisbury,  Lord,  504 

Salmon,  Dr.,  40,  97 

Salvation  Army,  289,  411 

Sandbutton,  194 

Savannah,  103-110,  115,  116,  130, 
167,  219 

Scott,  Thomas,  286 

Seeley,  quoted,  I 

Shadford,  George,  266 

Shaftesbury,  Lord,  294 

Shakespeare,  William,  2,  8 

Sherlock,  Bishop,  145 

Shirley,  Rev.  — ,  382-384 

Shoreham,  361 

Skelton.  Charles,  390 

Smollett,  5 

Snell's  "Wesley,"  514 

South  Leigh,  66 

Southcote,  Johanna,  335 

Southey,  Robert,  2,  6,  17,  68,  76, 
103,  123-126,  156,  158,  174,  186, 
205-209,  215,  220,  250,  256-258, 
263,  270-273,  299,  307,  316-318, 
323-331,  373,  379,  38i,  418,424, 
426,439,471,494,  514 

Spangenberg,  August,  100,  316 

Spencer,  Herbert,  309 

Stag,  Pitman,  237 

Stanniforth,  227-234,  239,  365 


536 


INDEX 


Stephen,  Sir  James,  172-174 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  i,  142,  145,  284, 

343,  477,  478,  497,  SH-S^ 
Sterne,  487 
Stevens's  "  History  of  Methodism," 

38.5 

Stillingfleet,  Bishop,  359,  402,  407 
Stourport,  508 
Stuart,  Dr.,  486 
Swift,  Jonathan,  9,  144,  448,  482 


TAYLOR,      Isaac,      40,    187,    454; 

"Methodism"  514,  527 

Jeremy,  63-65,  120,  127 

John,  194 

—  Eev.  Joseph,  347,  417 
Temple  Church,  345 
Tennyson,  Lord, 470,  523 
Test  Act,  294 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  140,  141 
Thomas,  John,  262 
Thomson's      "  City      of     Dreadful 

Night,"  503 
Told,  Silas,  521 
Toleration   Act,   see  under  Act   of 

Toleration 
Toplady,  384-385 
Treaty  of  Utrecht,  293 
Trevecca  Training  College,  379,  381 
Trewint,  193 
Twickenham,  509 
Tyburn,  153 
Tyerman's  "  Wesley,"  269,  459,  463 

VASEY,  Thomas,  272,  404,  413,  416, 

418 
Vazeille,  Mrs.  (afterwards  Mrs.  John 

Wesley),  459,  466-468 
Vermuyden,  Cornelius,  25 
Victoria,  Queen,  470 
Virginia,  260 
Voltaire,  Arouet  de,  290,  291,  379, 

480,485-487,  515,  520,521 

WALPOLE,  Horace,  5,  139,  337,  400; 

"  Letters,"  481,  482,  485 
— —  Sir  Robert,  go 
Walsall,  196,  197 

Walsh,  Thomas,  256-259,  447,  448 
Warburton,    Bishop,    15,    142,    145, 

343,  344 

Washington,  George,  10,  480,  515 
Watson,  Richard,  432,  433 
Watts,  Dr.,  147 


Webb,  Captain,  262,  263 
Wedgwood,  Miss,  144.  149,  169,  175. 
188,  219,  224,  332,  342,  373,  410, 

4H,474,  514 
Wednesbury,  195,  196 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  8,  9,  44,  45 
Wenvoe,  347 

Wesley,  Bartholomew  (great-grand- 
father), 13 

Charles  (brother),  44,  47,  61, 

70,  73,  78,  91,  92,  97,  98,  104,  105, 
113,  116-120,  124,  126,  153-157, 
164-166,  175-178,  187,  190,  198, 
205,  206,  253,  254,  270,  274,  302, 
307,  313,  3i8,  328,  329,  336-340, 
345,  357-365,  373,  379,  388,  396, 
406,  409,  413,  415,  438,  453-457, 
462-471,  476,  501-503,  508,  509 

Mrs.   Charles,    458,    467,    469 

(see  also  under  Gwynne,  Miss) 

Emilia  (sister),  18,  25,  26 

Garrett,  44 

Hetty   (sister),  26,  27,  40,  56 

(see  also  under  Wright,  Mrs. )  ; 
"  Hetty  Wesley,"  24 

Jedidah  (sister),  22 

—  John  (grandfather),  13 
Wesley,  John — 
Works : — 
"The  Charity  due  to  Wicked 

Persons  "  (sermon),  27 
"The     Circumcision     of     the 

Heart"  (sermon),  84 
"  Book  of  Prayers,"  85-86 
"The     Trouble    and    Rest    of 

Good  Men"  (sermon),  86 
"  Journals,"  97  seq. ;  478  seq. 
"  Georgian  Journal,"  108  seq. 
"  A     Calm     Address     to     our 
American      Colonies,"     269, 
453,  490 

"Appeal    to    Men    of    Reason 
and  Religion,"  288,  300,  301, 
343,  482,  516,  517 
"  Sermon  on  Free  Grace,"  325, 

5i6 

"  Rules    for    the    Stewards    of 
the  Methodist  Societies,"  353 
"  Twelve  Reasons  for  not  separa- 
ting   from    the    Church    of 
England,"  359,  405,  406 
"  Circular  Letter  to  Evangelical 

Clergy,"  351 

"  Rules  of  a  Helper,"  367-369 
"  Christian   Library,"   369-370, 
475 


INDEX 


537 


Wesley,  John — 

Works  (continued) : — 
"Korah  Sermon,"  418 
"  Sermon  on  Schism,"  419 
"Notes    on    the    New    Testa- 
ment," 433,  434,  475,  476 
"  Fifty-three     Sermons,"     433, 

434.  475 

"  Thoughts  on  Marriage  and 
a  Single  Life,"  456,  457 

"  A  Narrative  of  a  Remark- 
able Transaction  in  the 
Early  Life  of  John  Wesley," 
464 

"  Free  Thoughts  on  the  Present 
State  of  Public  Affairs,"  490 

"Treatise    on     Original    Sin," 

518,519 

Wesley,  Mrs.  John,  468-471  (see  also 
under  Vazeille,  Mrs.) 

Keziah  (sister),  30 

Martha  ("Patty" — sister),  30, 

31,    5°6     (see    °^o    under    Hall, 
Mrs.) 

Mehetabel  (sister),  22 


— -  Molly  (sister),  24 
— -  Nancy  (sister),  39 
—  Samuel  (father),  13-48,  56,  61- 
67,  71,  74,  88-92,  506 

Samuel  (brother),  24,  40,  41, 


44,  47,  48,  57,  79-82,  89-93,  149, 

150,  163,  317,  449 

Sukey  (sister),  26 

Susanna  (sister),  31 

Mrs.    Susannah    (mother),    4, 

14-26,  32-43,  48,  55-59,  62,  65- 

67,  74,  83,  93.  503,  5o6 
West,  Mr.,  164 
Westall,  Thomas,  206 
Westminster  Bridge,  292 
School,  44,  57 


Weymouth,  13 

Whatcoat,  Richard,  272,  404,  413, 
416,  418 

Wheatley,  319 

Whitefield,  George,  70,  74,  92,  115, 
116,  146,  155,  158-176,  180,  181, 
185,  187,  190,  198,  205,  210,  225, 
240-245,  260,  264,  274,  278,  286, 
290,  302,  303,  307,  310,  311,  322- 
346,  357  «eq.,  396,  414,  420,  431, 
452,  463,  471,  472,  498,  526,  527 

Mrs.  George,  471,  472 

Whitehead,  Dr.,  510 

Wilberforce,  Samuel,  9,  509 

Wilkes,  480 

William  of  Orange,  25 

Williams,  Thomas,  252 

Williamson,  William,  107 

Mrs.  109,  no  (see  also  under 

Hopkey,  Miss  Susan) 

Winchelsea,  190,  508 

Witney,  66 

Wolfe,  Sir  John,  9,  262,  480 

Wolseley,  Lord,  352 

Woodward,  219 

Woolf,  Mr.,  510 

Worcester,  508 

Wordsworth,  William,  9,  56 

Wright,  Mr.,  27 

Mrs.  Hetty,  27-29 

Richard,  264 

Wroote,  15,  71,  73-,  103,  115,  281 

Wycliffe,  John,  5,  7,  125,  357 


YORK,  211,  216 
Archbishop  of,  18 


ZINZENDORF,  Count,  116,  117,  150, 
316-318,  321 


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